Should we keep printing this paper?

I asked the question in my January Insight column and received a lot of feedback. The price of printing and mailing this publication has risen substantially, costing the Chronicle about $56,000 per month. That’s tough to sustain for 12 issues per year. Meanwhile, we’ve enhanced our digital offerings through downloadable PDFs of the print edition and have expanded our online coverage with video and additional photos we don’t have space to run in print. We’re active on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok. And we’re getting ready to enhance our award-winning podcast.

Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of readers who responded talked about how much they value the print edition — particularly, the ability to hold the news in their hand and to read it in a space and manner of their choosing. “I believe I am more likely to read it cover-to-cover, as I do now,” one reader said. “I usually keep it out on the counter and read it over the course of a few days. With digital, it wouldn’t be in plain sight for me to keep going back to.” Other readers pointed out how much they love our crossword puzzle. Even if it means going bimonthly or quarterly, they want the Chronicle to stay in print.

Our plan is to keep producing a print edition as long as possible. This year we’re experimenting with producing 10 issues instead of 12 to see how this impacts our bottom line. Please know how much I deeply appreciate your feedback and all of the kind words you said about this ministry.

“Having a central location of news for the church helps (to) keep the community feeling part of the larger Christian family,” one reader wrote. That’s why we do this.

Are you getting multiple copies?

After reading about our concerns with the cost of producing and mailing the paper, some of you likely were surprised to find two copies of the Chronicle in your mailbox. As part of our move to independence, we moved our database to a new system and a few glitches resulted. If you’re getting multiple copies of the print edition, please contact Sawmi Sektak in our office at sawmi@christianchronicle.org or call us at (405) 425-5070 and we’ll get it fixed.

New PO Box

Moving to independence from Oklahoma Christian University also required us to separate our mail from the Post Office Box used by the university. Some of our dedicated supporters still have Business Reply Mail envelopes that have the old address. Please do not send contributions or correspondence to PO Box 11000 in Oklahoma City. Our new address is PO Box 5240, Edmond, OK 73083-5240. You also can send correspondence directly to our office at 2801 E Memorial Rd. Ste 102, Edmond, OK 73013.

Thank you!

Last year we set the ambitious goal of raising $168,000 to help with one-time transition and equipment costs and ever-rising prices. I’m thrilled to report that, thanks to your gifts, we met and exceeded that goal!

If you missed the chance to contribute, fear not! We currently have a $100,000 matching gift given toward our spring appeal. The funds we raise will go toward stories that matter to you, including our “Who Are We?” series. Please mail checks to the address above or look for the “donate” button on our website, christianchronicle.org.

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org.

Mario and Yani Suárez waited three days in line at a bus station in western Cuba. The couple slept in the terminal to buy tickets for an all-day, multi-stop journey.

Samuel Rondón Aguilar and his mother, Margarita, endured 24 hours on a train from eastern Cuba.

Cuba in crisis: Read all the stories in the special package

At a desperate time for this Caribbean island nation — crippled by severe fuel and food shortages, frequent power outages and rising tensions with the United States, its powerful neighbor 90 miles to the north — faith in Jesus brought together Cuban believers this week. 

From all over the island — which stretches nearly 800 miles — Christians came to attend the fifth annual Missionary Congress in west-central Cuba. The five-day event celebrates church-planting efforts in the socialist nation of 9 million souls. 

“It’s a horrible trip,” Samuel Aguilar, 24, said of the train ride from Rio Cauto in Cuba’s eastern province of Granma. “But it’s a huge blessing to be here with the brothers and sisters.”

More than 300 men, women and children fill the Versalles Church of Christ building in Matanzas, Cuba, during the national discipleship gathering.

The fuel crisis has disrupted the availability and affordability of gasoline for personal vehicles and limited the frequency and reliability of normal public transportation options. 

Despite the challenges, more than 300 men, women and children filled the Versalles Church of Christ, about 60 miles east of Havana, on Saturday night and Sunday morning. A smaller group of leaders engaged in evangelistic training Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. 

The host congregation — which baptized 236 people in 2025 — meets in a government-authorized, open-air auditorium in Matanzas, the namesake capital of Cuba’s province of Matanzas.

Over the weekend, attendees sang, prayed and studied the Bible — and enjoyed time for fellowship with like-minded disciples experiencing the same societal troubles.

“We find spiritual nourishment here,” said Yani Suárez, 33, a mother of three who — like most of the Cubans interviewed for this story — spoke through a Spanish-language interpreter. “We find the fellowship. We find the love. And we just become renewed.

“At our home congregation, there’s just a few of us,” added Suárez, a minister’s wife in Cuba’s far western province of Pinar del Río. “It’s difficult, and at times it feels like we’re all alone. Here, we get to see other Christians, and we get to see that we’re not alone.”

Mario and Yani Suárez stand during worship at the Missionary Congress event in Matanzas, Cuba.

Even a week before the conference, organizer Tony Fernandez — the Versalles church’s longtime minister — doubted if he could pull it off.

“I was really worried, and my wife knew that I didn’t have everything that I needed to do this,” said Fernandez, who has helped plant more than 50 Cuban congregations. “But she’s got groups of women who pray every day starting at 5 a.m.

“And they prayed, and God works,” he added. “We were able to have transportation. We were able to get fuel.”

Tony Fernandez, far right, performs with the Matanzas chamber orchestra. The group presented a special concert for visiting Christians Sunday afternoon.

Besides his ministry work, Fernandez performs as a professional bass violinist with Matanzas’ chamber orchestra and fosters other deep ties in the community through his faith-based humanitarian endeavors. Local authorities applaud his efforts and help pave the way for the Versalles church’s special events.

Among those who made it to the Missionary Congress: 35 Christians from Colón, a Matanzas province town more than 50 miles away.

“How are you going to get here?” Fernandez asked.

The answer: The back of a cargo truck.

“They paid the driver,” the minister said, “but they’re here.”

Christians traveled from all over Cuba to attend the Missionary Congress event in Matanzas.

Stranglehold on daily life

So far in 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump has launched military operations aimed at regime change in Venezuela and Iran. 

Speculation mounts that Cuba’s 67-year-old Communist government — formed when the late Fidel Castro rose to power in this nation’s 1959 revolution — could be the next target.

Since the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, the U.S. has blocked Cuba’s oil imports and paralyzed the island’s tourist industry. Canadian and European airlines halted flights to the island because of the inability to refuel. 

For decades, Cuba has blamed U.S. sanctions for its economic problems, while the U.S. cites its aim to restore democracy and respect for human rights. 

The U.S.-imposed blockade since the Venezuela attack has put a stranglehold on daily life in Cuba.

Minister Tony Fernandez, left, baptizes new souls into Christ nearly every Lord’s Day. Six came forward to be baptized during this week’s Sunday morning assembly.

“We’ve never been through anything like this,” said Fernandez, 53, who as a child worshiped God discreetly with his parents when Castro imposed severe restrictions on churches.

Still, the minister praises God.

“We live the Christian life as an adventure of faith,” he said.

“We live the Christian life as an adventure of faith.”

Liudmila Barrizonte, a 52-year-old former English professor, worships with the Suárezes in Pinar del Río. She joined them at the Missionary Congress.

“It’s very difficult,” Barrizonte said of Cubans’ circumstances. “Everything is very expensive, like 10, 12, 15 or 100 times more expensive than before.”

But the Lord has a way of providing, she stressed.

“God multiplies the bread and the fish every day for the Cubans,” Barrizonte said, referring to the biblical accounts of Jesus feeding 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. 

“When you tell people that most of us survive with less than $10 a month, they don’t believe it, but we do,” she added. “It has to be God’s work. There’s no other explanation for me.”

Liudmila Barrizonte, left, visits with visiting American Christians Rick Elam and Mike Kellett at the home of Jorge Sanchez, who manages the church’s farm south of Matanzas.

U.S. Christians offer support 

A dozen Christians from six U.S. states flew to Cuba for the Missionary Congress. Given the island’s proximity to Florida, refueling is not a concern for U.S. airlines.

Chase Turner, president and CEO of Herald of Truth, which focuses on empowering Spanish-speaking works in Cuba, Honduras and the U.S., preached at the event Saturday night. 

Mike Kellett, senior minister for the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La., and co-director of its One Kingdom global ministry, gave two sermons Sunday morning.

“It’s just great to know that you’ve got brothers and sisters all around the world, and it’s encouraging to see them have such hope and such great spirits about them in the middle of their poverty,” Kellett told The Christian Chronicle. 

Herald of Truth and One Kingdom — in partnership with Illinois-based Hope and Equip — provided food for the conference and funds for roof repairs for the Versalles church. In addition, the ministries gave away free Spanish-language Bibles and bought motorcycles for a few Cuban preachers.

“We want to encourage the people here and also provide what they need from a financial standpoint,” said Turner, a member of the White’s Ferry Road church.

Chase Turner, president and CEO of Herald of Truth, preaches during the Missionary Congress event.

Some Cuban preachers lead as many as eight worship services each Lord’s Day, Fernandez said, and need a reliable means of transportation from congregation to congregation. 

“But then during the week, they can use the motorcycle as a taxi,” he explained. “Especially now when many buses aren’t running, that’s really needed.”

Other conference speakers included Tim Archer, minister for the Alvarado Church of Christ in Texas and director of development for the Texas International Bible Institute; and Jimmy Pinzón, who lives in Alabama and focuses on ministry outreach to Colombia.

Archer, a former missionary to Argentina, worked for Herald of Truth for two decades. 

He has made 48 mission trips to Cuba.

On his latest one, an eerie quietness greeted him in Matanzas — a normally bustling city of roughly 150,000 people.

“It’s sad to see the lack of cars or buses,” Archer said. “Normally, there’s heavy traffic. It’s a big city, and right now, about all you see are a few motorcycles around — and a lot of those are electric motorcycles because there’s just no gas. 

Residents walk along a Matanzas, Cuba, street during the U.S. mission group’s recent trip.

“There’s more trash around, too,” he added. “I think the trash trucks aren’t able to run as much.”

Yet Fernandez — Archer’s brother in Christ and longtime friend — approaches the difficulties with optimism and deep faith, the Texas minister said.

“I know that he hurts for people, and he is having to do so much,” Archer said, noting that the Versalles church feeds members every Sunday because otherwise “they’ll faint on the way home because they don’t have anything to eat.”

The Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas, Cuba, feeds the crowd during the Missionary Congress event.

Blessings and baptisms

From a desire for fellowship to the opportunity for outreach instruction, all the Christians who traveled to Matanzas had personal reasons for doing so. 

What motivated the Aguilars to tolerate a grueling train ride?

Flooding after Hurricane Melissa ravaged the family’s hometown.

The son and mother came to thank Fernandez and other believers who helped in the storm’s aftermath.

“There were families who lost everything,” Samuel Aguilar said.

Samuel and his father, Arsenio, who is undergoing kidney dialysis and couldn’t make the trip, work with three small congregations and share preaching duties.

After the October hurricane, Fernandez drove to Rio Cauto and offered food, money and spiritual support.

“Because of the way the church helped out there, 22 people were baptized,” Samuel said. “So that’s a huge motivation for us to keep working and keep preaching because of all of these people that came to Jesus.”

Samuel Rondón Aguilar, right, thanks fellow Christians for their help after Hurricane Melissa. Also pictured, from left, are Esmailys Pamayo Leyva, Margarita Aguilar and Mairín Méndez Sánchez.

While in Rio Cauto, Fernandez noticed victims trying to dry out mattresses soaked in river water.

“That’s impossible,” Fernandez thought to himself.

So at the Missionary Congress, the Versalles minister presented the Aguilars and a couple who came with them from Rio Cauto with new mattresses. The Central Church of Christ in Sparta, Tenn., donated the items.

“It’s not just for us,” Samuel said of the gift. “There are other brothers and sisters who lost their mattresses, and we’re going to be able to help them.”

After arriving in Matanzas, the Aguilars learned their planned return train was being canceled, said Candice Pinzón, who has made a half-dozen mission trips to Cuba with her husband, Jimmy.

Pinzón said the faith and resiliency of the island’s Christians inspire her.

“They travel without the security of knowing how they’re going to get back home or the food along the way,” she said. “But they come anyway.”

Christians pray during the Lord’s Supper at the Missionary Congress event.

‘The Lord will fight for you’

Blanco, who came to Matanzas via the ferry and buses, preaches on Cuba’s Isle of Youth.

Before converting to the Church of Christ, the 76-year-old minister practiced Santería, a fusion of African religions and Catholicism.

But in 1990, he faced mounting problems in his life. So he decided, he said, to flip open his Bible and do what it told him.

“I opened it to Psalm 115, and it told me to get rid of my idols,” Blanco said.

He did just that and was baptized.

Since then, he has started three congregations on the Isle of Youth. Their combined membership totals 300, including many who came from the Santería faith.

René Sánchez Blanco leads a prayer during the Missionary Congress event.

“I really like to be with the other brothers and sisters and have a chance to preach to people,” Blanco said of why he came to the Missionary Congress.

As for Cuba right now, he points to Exodus 14:14: “The Lord will fight for you; you only need to be still.”

“Everything’s hard,” Blanco said, “but we trust in God.”

The town square in Matanzas, Cuba.

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

A U.S. blockade on oil shipments to this Caribbean island nation has spurred Cuba’s deepening humanitarian crisis.

“People are worried a lot about the stuff that they have to add to their crops, like insecticides, because they can’t find it,” Sánchez said,  speaking through a Spanish-language translator.

Cuba in crisis: Read all the stories in the special package

But Sánchez relies on a special means of keeping the bugs away.

“I do pest control at night,” he said. “What I do is, I come and pray in my fields, and God takes care of all of that stuff.”

Sánchez grows beans, onions, plantains, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables at a church-operated farm about 20 miles south of the provincial capital of Matanzas in west-central Cuba.

Jorge Sánchez learns drip irrigation techniques at his farm in Limonar, Cuba.

The 17-year-old farm started small and grew after Tony Fernandez, longtime minister for the Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas, baptized a rural couple.

The couple had lost two adult sons — one in a bicycle accident and another who died by suicide.

Jorge Sánchez, the couple’s third son, was “living a wild life of drinking and chasing women,” the minister recalled when The Christian Chronicle first visited the farm a few years ago.

But like his parents, Sánchez became a devoted Christian.

“No turning back, no turning back,” he sang gleefully in Spanish as he trekked through a field in 2023.

Jorge Sánchez works at the farm.

Maximum yields, minimum water

The farm produces crops to feed church members as well as orphans and elderly people in the community.

“I want to be able to provide a balanced meal to the people,” Sánchez said of his diverse range of produce. “I don’t want a whole lot of one thing. I want different things.”

A U.S. mission group that came to support and encourage Christians in Cuba visited the farm this past weekend. Two global ministries — Herald of Truth and One Kingdom — organized the trip.

Bill Orange, an elder of the Pegram Church of Christ, southwest of Nashville, Tenn., demonstrated a concept known as Farming God’s Way.

“This type of farming might work for some of you,” Orange, a former missionary to Liberia and Fiji, said as he taught drip irrigation techniques.

Bill Orange explores the church-owned farm in Limonar, Cuba, about 20 miles south of the provincial capital of Matanzas.

Drip irrigation uses buckets and hoses to deliver a tiny but constant “drip” of water to plants. It’s designed to produce maximum crop yields with minimal water usage and is especially helpful in drought conditions.

Orange emphasized that he could learn a lot about farming from Sánchez but said drip irrigation might be helpful in certain situations.

Sánchez welcomed the advice.

“He taught me a very easy way to use the water,” Sánchez said. “I know how to plant, but this is so helpful for the watering.

“I’m a very simple man,” the farmer added. “I don’t like technology. It just stresses me out. And this is so simple.”

A scene at the church-operated farm Jorge Sánchez manages in Limonar, Cuba.

Fernandez said he hopes Orange can return to Cuba soon — perhaps before the three-month rainy season begins in May — to provide additional instruction.

“Because of the shortage of food, we’ve really been working on helping people start growing food at their own homes,” Fernandez said.

With the lack of fuel, “it’s getting harder to bring the food in from the farm,” the minister added. “This — being able to grow crops with much less water — is really important.”

Orange, who traveled to Cuba with Marilyn, his wife of 55 years, said he’s eager to come back.

“I tell people all around the world that I have mud in my blood,” Orange said. “You can’t get it out. I was raised on a farm.”

In that respect, Orange and Sánchez are kindred spirits.

“I was born in the fields,” Sánchez said.

Church members help tend to the farm that Jorge Sánchez manages.

‘God is going to find a way’

For his part, Sánchez keeps praying that God will provide a solution for Cuba’s fuel scarcity.

“You can see for yourself that we have a bunch of stuff that should have already been picked,” he said. “But if we pick it and just leave it there because we don’t have the fuel to take it to the city, then it’s just going to go to waste.”

But he remains undeterred.

Cuba’s fuel shortage has complicated efforts to take produce from the rural farm to the city.

“I have always learned to deal with difficult things like the dry season and lack of stuff, so it doesn’t really affect me,” he said. “Nevertheless, seeing the stuff there and knowing that people need it, it’s difficult to deal with. But I know that God is going to find a way.”

Sánchez lifted his pointing finger toward the sky.

And he smiled with confidence.

“If this fuel problem is not going to get fixed,” he said, “then I know that God is going to send us an electric car fueled by solar power, and that’s going to be our solution.”

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

Yet the Caribbean island nation’s Christians have not lost faith, as The Christian Chronicle discovered during a recent reporting trip.

Find links to all the in-depth coverage below:

The Versalles Church of Christ in Matanzas, Cuba, feeds the crowd during the Missionary Congress event.

• No fuel? No food? Amid crisis in Cuba, there’s no shortage of faith

Christians travel by boat, bus, train — and even a cargo truck — to attend a national discipleship gathering.

Jorge Sanchez learns drip irrigation techniques at his farm in Limonar, Cuba.

• Faith sustains Cuban farmer during time of crisis

Crops benefit church members as well as orphans and elderly people in the community.

The town square in Matanzas, Cuba.

• ‘Cuban people love the American people’

Minister urges U.S. church members to keep making mission trips to the Caribbean island.

A classic car crosses a bridge in Matanzas, Cuba, in 2023. Decades-old vehicles are a common sight on Cuban roads because of a longstanding U.S. trade embargo.

• Bonus from 2023: For Cuba, a time of stress — and salvation

Amid an economic crisis, ministry and music propel a native son devoted to sharing the bread of life.

About the journalist

Bobby Ross Jr. takes notes during a visit to a church-operated farm in Limonar, Cuba.

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Since joining the Chronicle in 2005, he has reported from all 50 U.S. states and 20 nations. He writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

That morning, my home country attacked his.

Tony found out several hours before I did. He’d been up since 2 a.m., when messages from his friends and family in Iran flooded his phone. It was a rare night when he forgot to silence his WhatsApp account, and it turned out to be providential.

“My family is safe,” he said. “Yes, and I’m very happy and excited.”

Erik and Tony prepare to part ways after lunch at Simply Falafel in Edmond, Okla.

I met Tony when he was my Uber driver to the airport for my trip to the Red Tie Gala in St. Lucia last year. I’ve had a lot of interesting airport rides in two-plus decades with The Christian Chronicle. A guy in Sarajevo told me that his country had pyramids with mystic powers. One driver was convinced that the Denver airport is haunted. (Seriously, they have a horse statue nicknamed “Blucifer.”) And there was the lady who, at 3 a.m., had a song blaring all the way to Will Rogers Airport — “I hope that heaven has a smoking section!” (If you’re in the smoking section, that ain’t heaven, pal.)

Tony was different. “I like your shirt!” he hollered as soon as he pulled into my driveway. I had on the “Jesus You” T-shirt I got from The Park Church of Christ in Tulsa, Okla., a few years back. It has become my airport shirt and has sparked some wonderful conversations, as I’ve mentioned before. 

At the airport in Sofia, Bulgaria, Erik Tryggestad meets Steve Rice of Oskaloosa, Iowa, who traveled to the European nation as part of a mission trip to train Bulgarian evangelists.

Tony, who worships with a Baptist church in Oklahoma City, has traveled all over the world working with Farsi-speaking believers. After many years as a preacher, he now leads a ministry that helps Western Christians effectively share Jesus with their Muslim neighbors. 

I got his number and promised to stay in touch. Four months later, I finally made good on that promise.

At lunch, Tony told me about growing up in Iran, where he started attending mosque at age 5. (His surname, Emamghoraishi, competes with mine in length and pronounceability.) By his teen years, Tony had questions about his faith that his teachers struggled to answer. He balked against the justifications for holy war, for killing infidels and shuddered at the frightening depictions of hell and eternal punishment that he heard over and over. 

On top of a Farsi-language Bible open to the prophet Isaiah, an Iranian Christian named Miriam flips through her own copy of a Farsi New Testament. She has highlighted the parable of the Pearl of Great Price in the Gospel of Matthew. The Christian Chronicle spoke with Miriam in 2018 when she was living as a refugee in Athens, Greece.

As a Farsi speaker, he didn’t understand why Islam required him to learn Arabic. But it was the Muslim call to prayer that really puzzled him. He knew he was supposed to face Qibla, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. But what if he were at the North Pole, where every direction is south? That reminded me a bit of the “what if you get in a car wreck and die on the way to the baptistery” argument so many of us in Churches of Christ raised in our teen Bible classes.

Tony began studying to become a mullah, but the more he learned about Islam, the more dissatisfied he became. So he abandoned his faith and became an atheist, even flirting a bit with communism. Then he came to the U.S. in 1978, just before the Iranian Revolution, to study industrial engineering at Lincoln University of Missouri.

After completing his degree, he moved to Bartlesville, Okla., and ran small businesses, including a doughnut shop. There he met his wife, a native Okie. She was pregnant with their second child when the couple’s landlord hired a painter named Waymmond for the whole complex. Tony got to know Waymmond, who also was a minister, and occasionally let him use the phone in his apartment. 

“He was very, very nice. I mean, I could see love and compassion through him. He had a beautiful smile. (He said), ‘Tony, it’s OK. Jesus loves you.’”

“Then he started talking about Jesus Christ,” Tony said. “I told him, ‘My friend, stop right here. I’m atheist. I don’t believe in the one you call God. This Jesus guy you’re talking about, don’t waste your breath.”

So Waymmond stopped, much to Tony’s surprise. “He was very, very nice. I mean, I could see love and compassion through him. He had a beautiful smile. (He said), ‘Tony, it’s OK. Jesus loves you.’” 

No wonder he liked my T-shirt.

Erik Tryggestad takes a photo with members of  the Park Church of Christ in Tulsa, Okla., just before receiving his “Jesus You” T-shirt in early 2024. The Park church hosted Christians and community members during a weekend-long project to produce Manna Packs for the nonprofit Feed My Starving Children.

His wife began attending the church where Waymmond preached, and eventually Tony tagged along to see what it was like. The preacher “greeted me just like the others,” Tony recalled, “and he knew I was an atheist.” That’s not how it was at the mosques in Iran, he said. Non-Muslims aren’t welcome. And when they prayed, “they called God their father. Are you kidding me? In Islam, if you call Allah ‘father,’ that’s blasphemy. But with your father … you can share your feelings, You can share your success, struggles.”

Tony got a New Testament and started reading, hoping to find some details to disprove Christianity or to prove that it was the same as other religions. Eventually, his studies led him to embrace the faith he had sought to discredit. 

He remembers the morning after his conversion. He got up between 3 and 4 a.m., as usual, to make the donuts. “I said, ‘Man, I’m so light. I have great peace.’” He always worried about what would happen to his wife and daughters if he died, but that fear was gone.

Muslim tourists stroll through historic Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2025.

Since then, Tony has traveled the globe and baptized more than 300 former Muslims. He has preached for congregations of Farsi speakers across the U.S., including Oklahoma City. Now age 70, he’s “retired” but coordinates FMC Ministry (From Muhammed to Christ) that helps American Christians effectively serve and share the Gospel with their Muslim neighbors.

He hears a lot of Christians pray for doors to open to reach Islamic nations and for God to prepare the hearts of Muslim people for salvation. That’s great, Tony said, but it’s really important that we pray for God to remove their fear. Many Muslims are afraid to question their faith, even a little bit. The terrible depictions of eternal torment and routine condemnations of non-Muslims he heard as a child instilled in him more fear than faith, he said. 

The incarnation, God becoming flesh in the person of Jesus, is a really difficult — even blasphemous — concept for Muslims, Tony said. Allah is divine and would not debase himself in such a manner. He must be worshiped with extreme reverence and respect. It’s important that Christians focus on the why behind the incarnation. God loves us so much that he put on flesh and came to be with us, to rescue us. And his love for us isn’t contingent on what we do.

“You have to reach out to your God. My God reached out to me.”

One convert put it this way: “You have to reach out to your God. My God reached out to me.”

I’m praying for Tony, for his family, and for all Iranians in Iran and scattered around the globe. May God work through all of the bad to bring about good.

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org.

Keith Stanglin, pulpit minister for the University Avenue Church of Christ in Austin, Texas, experienced a jolt himself when he discovered it.

“In the last year or two,” Stanglin told me in an email, “I’ve started watching a little more football (NFL and NCAA) again, after taking a nearly total hiatus for many years. So I easily notice how things have changed (in and around the game). One of the most obvious new changes is the ubiquitous advertising and promoting of online sports betting. I find it shocking and horrible; it angers me.”

Americans are expected to wager a record $1.76 billion legally on Sunday’s Super Bowl LX game between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, according to USA Today.

For decades, religious opponents waged battles — albeit often unsuccessfully — to prevent legalized gambling. Nearly a quarter-century ago, I covered the fight over a proposed Tennessee state lottery for The Associated Press.

“Since 47 states have gambling, I would have to think God’s not really against it,” Democratic state Sen. Steve Cohen — Tennessee’s chief lottery proponent, who is now a U.S. congressman — told me in 2002.

Based on that logic, God must really love Americans’ ability to click on a smartphone and wager on a live NBA, MLB or NFL game.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a ban on sports betting. That decision opened the floodgates as nearly 40 states rushed to legalize the practice, an AP story noted.

It all happened so quickly — mostly without the fierce religious opposition seen on earlier gambling questions.

Why?

Christianity Today’s Emily Belz’s offered this explanation in a 2024 report:

State-level Christian organizations that tried to fight off the recent legalization of sports betting or put guardrails around it found that there was too much money on the other side of the issue and not much appetite for fighting in the pews.

Few Christians see sports gambling as a problem. A 2016 survey from Lifeway Research found that only 36 percent of Christians thought sports betting was morally wrong. Pastors carry more reservations, with a majority telling Lifeway in 2019 that betting on sports is morally wrong and three-quarters believing it should not be legal.

People responding on social media to critiques of gambling on Desiring God or The Gospel Coalition argued that the authors were being “legalistic” and that betting was no different than investing in the stock market or a 401(k).

Putting bucks on the big game through a few clicks on an app or sports site doesn’t have the social stigma that casino gambling used to carry. The 2020 Gallup figures on the issue showed that 71 percent of Americans said gambling was morally acceptable, the highest level in the 18 years it had done the survey.

But those who continue to be involved in antigambling activism say it’s still harmful.

In a different 2024 story, Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana cited similar reasons “why faith leaders lost the battle against online sports betting.”

Smietana emphasized the speed at which the nearly nationwide defeats occurred:

Some of the nation’s largest faith groups have long considered gambling immoral, or a “menace to society,” as the United Methodist Church social principles put it. But faith leaders like (Baptist pastor Greg) Davis are likely fighting an uphill battle, said longtime Boston College professor and Jesuit priest Richard McGowan.

McGowan, who has been nicknamed “the Odds Father” because of his research on gambling, said faith leaders were caught flatfooted by how fast legalized sports gambling became commonplace.

After New Hampshire started the first state-run lottery in 1964, he said, it took nearly 60 years for 40 other states to follow suit. Legalized sports betting took five years to get that popular — after the Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that limited legal sports betting to Nevada.

Instead of having to jet off to Las Vegas to place a legal bet, in most states, people can pull out their phones and use a popular app like FanDuel or Caesar Sportsbook to place bets on the outcomes of games along with almost anything else that happens in a game.

The ease of legalized betting coincided with what McGowan called “the ethics of tolerance.”

This past fall, Slate’s Molly Olmstead delved into why evangelical gambling critics have “largely gone quiet at the moment the country needs them most.”

Olmstead noted:

To understand why evangelicals appear to have lost their taste for anti-gambling crusades, it’s necessary to first look at the ways the sports betting industry has enfeebled its entire opposition.

This issue cannot be understood properly without an acknowledgement of the bogglingly large sums of money poured into it. DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and other major commercial interests have flooded statehouses with teams of lobbyists who often pitch gambling as a way to fund popular causes, such as scholarships or clean water. And those companies aren’t the only big players: The major sports leagues have seen the potential for their own gain—from increased fan engagement, from official paid partnerships, from media licensing, and from licensing the data sold to sportsbooks—and thrown their support behind the legalization bills. That pivot, a complete turnaround from the industry’s firm opposition to sports betting back in the ’90s, when athletes and league bigwigs testified that betting would corrupt sports, has eliminated one of the last major checks on the gambling industry’s lobbying power. 

Now, 14 percent of U.S. adults say they bet on professional or college sports online, according to AP, with a growing list of sports betting scandals making headlines.

A record $1.76 billion is expected to be wagered on the Super Bowl.

More people seem to be asking if legal sports betting is good or bad for America.

In a Pew Research Center survey last year, 43 percent of U.S. adults said “the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society.” That was up from 34 percent in 2022.

An expert quoted by the Deseret News’ Dennis Romboy detailed his concerns:

“I just feel like this all happened so quickly for people that they didn’t necessarily have a chance to digest what the stakes were, what the dangers were,” said journalist Danny Funt, who chronicled the rise of American sports gambling in a new book titled “Everybody Loses” due out in January.

“It happened so quickly that the gambling industry and their business partners had such a powerful lobby and public platform to assure people that this was, if not neutral, actually a good thing for sports and society.”

Funt said evidence of rising gambling addiction rates and dangers to public health along personal finance issues such as higher bankruptcy rates, less savings and college students tapping into their tuition fund is trickling in.

“All of these studies and research projects are creating a mountain of bad news,” he said. “I would expect those figures (in the poll) to continue to skew toward more concern than optimism as time passes.”

I have an email list that I sometimes use to seek feedback on topics such as this. So in advance of the Super Bowl, I asked about sports betting.

“It’s three will get you five that you don’t get the truth,” one friend replied, using betting parlance for high odds.

To be sure, no one replied to advocate for betting on Sunday’s game. But others shared thoughtful comments.

“For many Christians, the concern isn’t about a single bet — it’s about the cultural shift,” said Aaron Sayles, a member of the Newport News Church of Christ in Virginia.

“Gambling is now accessible 24/7,” added Sayles, who plans to watch the Super Bowl. “It is aggressively marketed. It is statistically addictive. It is financially destructive for millions. It subtly reshapes the heart toward risk, greed and escapism.”

“Gambling is now accessible 24/7. It is aggressively marketed. It is statistically addictive. It is financially destructive for millions. It subtly reshapes the heart toward risk, greed and escapism.”

Kevin Ward, a sports radio program director and an elder of The Park Church of Christ in Tulsa, Okla., said, “People can actually bet on something while the game is going on. I think this has become an epidemic among younger men, especially.

“Because bets are placed in smaller increments, I think a lot of people don’t view it as a big deal,” Ward added. “But then when you look back over time, it likely adds up to the same amount of spending.”

Makenzie Young, youth minister with her husband, Jonathan, for the Eugene Church of Christ in Oregon, said she heard a parent exclaim, “Man, I bet $100 on this game!” at a recent kindergarten basketball scrimmage.

“This was at a game where they don’t even keep score,” Young said.

“We talk about it some with our teens, to which most of them ask why it would be bad to go to Vegas only once,” she added. “I think a lot of people see it as a fun ‘once’ thing to do. But in reality, it’s a waste of resources God has given you, and it gives the devil a potentially huge foothold, in my opinion.”

Mitch East, adult education minister for the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, said online sports gambling preys on men.

“If pornography is a vice that enslaves male libido, online sports betting is a vice that enslaves men’s desire for risk and adventure,” East said. “I will not bet on the Super Bowl, and I never want any access to sports betting apps for me or my kids. I think every Christian parent should be worried if they have sons.”

Jake Perkins, senior minister for the Grace Crossing Church of Christ in Conroe, Texas, said he preached a series last fall called “Raised by a Casino” in which he attempted “to show people how the modern architecture of phone apps is built on the decades-old design of casinos in Vegas and beyond.

“It is definitely a problem,” Perkins said.

“And no, I don’t bet,” he quipped. “I am a preacher. Who has the money to bet?”

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

Standing on the observation deck at Aegibong Peace Ecopark, holding cups of coffee from the brand new Starbucks behind them, visitors gaze across the Han River to the rolling hills of the world’s most isolated, enigmatic and repressive state.

North Korea’s “Peace Village” stands across the Han River from Aegibong Peace Ecopark near Gimpo, South Korea.

Through digital binoculars they peer into North Korea’s “Peace Village,” a set of nondescript, multilevel buildings. There, a woman beats sheaves of rice on a stone threshing floor. A man in gray work clothes rides a bike past monuments to the North’s deceased leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

“Propaganda Village,” South Koreans call it.

South Koreans stop by the DMZ Starbucks as they gaze into North Korea at Aegibong Peace Ecopark.

The South Korean military started allowing visitors here only recently, says Sang Yang, who preaches for Churches of Christ in the capital, Seoul, and across the nation of 52 million. His parents fled from the North during the Korean War, a brutal conflict that claimed 2.5 million lives between 1950 and 1953. He grew up in the countryside and came to Seoul at age 16 with the equivalent of $5 in his pocket. He got a job ironing shirts at a laundromat in the city’s business district, Gangnam, and slept under a table there at night.

Sang Yang

By the light of a kerosene lamp, Yang studied lessons from the Bible Correspondence Center, or BCC, a ministry of Churches of Christ. Bill Ramsay, an American who served in the Korean War as an Air Force radio mechanic, launched the center in 1964. Yang was student No. 61,873.

Ramsay baptized him in a bathtub.

Now Yang, 66, directs the BCC, which includes in-person and online ministry courses. The center occupies a four-story building in the heart of Seoul, which also serves as the meeting place for a small Church of Christ.

For Yang, Aegibong is more than a tourist attraction. Looking across the river, he repeats words he’s said many times. “My relatives are right there. And I don’t know if they’re alive or dead.”

This is part of series on the struggle toward divine reconciliation. Read more here.

The park takes its name from the legend of Aegi, a woman in the 17th century who was deeply in love with the governor of North Korea’s Pyongan Province. When China’s Qing dynasty invaded, the governor sent Aegi south and told her to wait for him on an isolated mountain peak. She waited there until her death, and asked to be buried facing her lost love in the north.

Like Aegi, Yang yearns to be reunited with his family in North Korea. More than that, he wants to bring the Good News he found in Seoul to the people of the North, whose government severely restricts Christianity. All that stands in his way is the Korean Demilitarized Zone, 160 miles of razor wire and barricades.

But Yang has a workaround. With a wry smile, he leans close and says, almost in a whisper, “I sneak into North Korea every night.”

The Waterproof Gospel

About an hour south of the sparsely populated Peace Village, the city of Seoul stands as a juggernaut of steel and glass. Billboards flash with ads for Samsung, LG, Hyundai and other multinational corporations, a testament to South Korea’s breakneck development.

“Only God knows how many churches and people there are who truly practice according to the Bible as the Lord’s church.”

Christianity thrives here, too, as testified to by the neon crosses that glow on the sides of skyscrapers. The Yoido Full Gospel Church, one of the world’s largest congregations, has an estimated 1 million members.

Skyscrapers reflect the setting sun as they stand on the banks of the Han River in Seoul, South Korea. The small cross at far right stands atop the meeting place of the Yoido Full Gospel Church.

A recent directory lists about 500 Churches of Christ in South Korea with a combined membership between 15,000 and 20,000. “However,” Yang says, “this is what we are saying based on the names written on the church signboards. Only God knows how many churches and people there are who truly practice according to the Bible as the Lord’s church.”

The number of Christians in North Korea is far more difficult to estimate. North Korea’s ruling ideology “treats religion as an existential threat,” according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “resulting in the severe persecution of Christians … with punishments including forced labor, imprisonment, torture and execution.”

An estimated 400,000 to 900,000 North Koreans escaped to the South during the war, and about 43,000 more have defected since the armistice of 1953 that established the 160-mile DMZ. Neither side signed a peace treaty, so the two Koreas technically are still at war.

Roh Myung-kwan

Roh Myung-kwan left North Korea during the war years, just like Yang’s parents, and studied at the Bible Correspondence Center. After his baptism, Roh prayed fervently for peace, that the suffering souls in his homeland would find relief — and Jesus.

The Bible Correspondence Center building stands in downtown Seoul.

He and Sang devised the “Waterproof Gospel” project in the early 2010s. Roh financed the printing of 1.2 million copies of the Gospel of Matthew, in Korean, on single, waterproof pages. Church members tied the pages to balloons and checked weather patterns. Whenever the wind blew from south to north, they gathered near the DMZ and released the balloons, with quiet cries of “Hallelujah.”

In 2023, Yang shifted to a newer technology — albeit one that is still more than 100 years old. The minister produces a 60-minute program that travels into North Korea through shortwave radio. Yang partners with World Christian Broadcasting, a ministry launched by Churches of Christ in 1977, to produce the program. Through its transmitter in Anchor Point, Alaska — KNLS (New Life Station) — the ministry sends shortwave broadcasts around the globe in languages including Russian, Chinese and Korean. A second transmitter in Madagascar broadcasts in Arabic, Portuguese and more.

A Church of Christ gathers for Sunday worship in the BCC building in Seoul.

The Korean program includes a cappella worship, Scripture reading and brief devotional messages. Many North Koreans have access to shortwave receivers, which the government uses to send its propaganda programs. Hopefully, Yang says, the people of the North hear the Gospel, too.

Is anybody listening?

“Give me a hint, O Lord. If there are people in North Korea listening, would you give me a hint so that I would not be weary?”

Yang finds himself praying those words a lot. He’s talked with authorities who assure him that his broadcasts are getting through.

“We have received feedback from many countries … from Russia and China, and we have received emails of thanks from Japan, Pakistan, the United States, India and even Ukraine, which is at war.”

“We have received feedback from many countries … from Russia and China, and we have received emails of thanks from Japan, Pakistan, the United States, India and even Ukraine, which is at war.”

Nothing yet from North Korea.

But Yang sees small signs of hope. Before the 2000s, most refugees from North Korea said they had never seen a Bible. Recent studies show that about 8 percent of defectors say they have personally seen or come into contact with a Bible while in the North.

Roh Myung-kwan died in 2021, two years before the Korean broadcasts began. Yang remembers their last conversation, when Roh said, “It seems my days here are not long. I want you to know how happy I am to have met you and studied the Bible.”

@christianchronicle PAJU, SOUTH KOREA — Sang Yang, director of the Bible Correspondence Center in Seoul, visits the grave of Roh Myung-kwan at Gyeongmo Park. Roh, who fled North Korea during the Korean War, and his wife Kim Kyung-soon are buried in a cemetery for North Koreans, with their graves facing the mountains of their homeland across the Korea Demilitarized Zone. Roh was a Christian who dreamed of sharing the Gospel with his homeland. #paju #northkorea #southkorea #churchofchrist ♬ original sound – The Christian Chronicle

After visiting the Aegibong observation deck, Yang drives to Roh’s grave in Donghwa Gyeongmo Park near the town of Paju. There, a cemetery is the final resting place for hundreds of North Koreans separated from their families. Each is buried in a section named after their home province in North Korea. The graves all face the North, just like Aegi’s. In the distance stands a tall pole topped with a cross, lit at night so it can be seen from across the DMZ.

Sang Yang visits the grave of Roh Myung-kwan at Donghwa Gyeongmo Park near Paju, South Korea.

Roh is buried next to his wife. On his tombstone, written in Korean, is Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

“Yes, he was a peacemaker,” Yang says, “and I miss him.”

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org.

The simple brick structure was home to the Silver Point West End Church of Christ, which met for decades in a rural community 60 miles east of Nashville. Its membership in decline, the church discontinued weekly services in the mid-1990s but lives on in yearly homecoming reunions.

A sign in front of the Silver Point West End of Church of Christ notes its establish date in 1909 and closing date in 1996.

A recent homecoming celebrated not only the preachers and other male leaders but the women who have garnered for Silver Point a prized place in the history of Black Churches of Christ.

“Do you realize how important Middle Tennessee is?” historian and speaker Edward J. Robinson asked the more than 100 people attending the 26th Silver Point reunion. “Everybody ought to take off your shoes, because we’re on holy ground.”

The homecoming activities began at noon on a recent Saturday with a ceremony honoring Silver Point members who had fought in both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam.

“Whatever the period and whatever the cause, the ones now entombed in this sacred earth are real heroes,” said Donnell Carr, whose parents along with other relatives rest in the church cemetery.

“Whatever the period and whatever the cause, the ones now entombed in this sacred earth are real heroes.”

After the memorial, guests entered the church building for a program about Silver Point’s history, followed by songs from musical groups from visiting congregations. A late lunch at a nearby community center ended the day.

The next morning featured an assembly, an afternoon potluck and a concluding worship service.

Silver Point reunion committee chair Harold Carr speaks to reunion attendees.

Robinson spoke on that Saturday about a key figure from Silver Point’s past, Annie C. Tuggle, born in 1890 near Memphis to former slaves.

Professor of history at Texas College in Tyler, Texas, where he also serves as minister for the North Tenneha Church of Christ, Robinson has written extensively on Black Churches of Christ.

“What would the church be without good and godly women?” he asked the crowd. “We’d be in bad shape.”

Robinson set Tuggle’s life squarely in America’s past, emphasizing — as Tuggle’s parents illustrated — the inescapable link between slavery and Black Churches of Christ.

Harold Carr and historian Edward J. Robinson display the certificate of appreciation Carr awarded Robinson for participating in the 26th Silver Point homecoming.

The plight of Black Americans, he said, has been a “drama within a drama.”

Tuggle’s story intersected Silver Point’s after she left the Methodist Church to become a member of Churches of Christ, converted by a preacher associated with George Phillip “G.P.” Bowser, the founder of the Silver Point Christian Institute. Bowser himself was responsible for the conversion of Tuggle’s mother.

G.P. Bowser, a renowned Black minister who preached for the Jackson Street Church of Christ in Nashville

Bowser launched the institute in the first decade of the 20th century to provide African American children in first through eighth grades a Christian education. What’s now the historic Silver Point church building was added a few years after the school’s beginning.

Learning of the Silver Point Christian Institute from Bowser’s periodical, the Christian Echo, Tuggle moved to Middle Tennessee and “joined the crusade, the movement of educating … African American youth,” Robinson explained.

Though Tuggle had a university degree, she moved to Silver Point “to absorb more Scripture,” Robinson said, adding that Bowser, aware of Tuggle’s talents, commissioned her to serve as ambassador for the school. She not only provided a role model for students but supported the institution as a fundraiser.

Robinson underscored Tuggle’s knowledge and insight as a Christian leader.

In the 1930s, Tuggle attended a meeting during which a Black congregation in Memphis was considering firing its preacher to pay the mortgage. Another woman at the meeting, who, like Tuggle, opposed the idea, nudged her Christian sister to say something.

“When you take the Gospel out of the church, you have a dead church,” Tuggle stood up to declare. Instead of letting the minister go, she suggested inviting famed evangelist Marshall Keeble to Memphis to grow the church.

“When you take the Gospel out of the church, you have a dead church.”

Keeble’s month-long meeting yielded 75 baptisms.

Tuggle’s support of the Silver Point Christian Institute became part of a chain of events that would make Bowser’s lifelong dream of an institution to educate Black Christians come true.

A historical marker outside the West End Silver Point Church of Christ.

Silver Point closed as a Christian school about a decade after its start. Later, Bowser founded the Bowser Christian Institute in Fort Smith, Ark., then the Southern Bible Institute in Fort Worth, Texas. The Fort Worth institute moved to Terrell, Texas, and became Southwestern Christian College.

“There is no Southwestern Christian College … without the Silver Point Christian Institute,” Robinson said.

Frances Baugh, a member of The United School Workers, a fundraising organization for Southwestern, appreciated Robinson’s message about Tuggle. Baugh had driven a church bus with 14 guests from her organization as well as Nashville’s Schrader Lane Church of Christ to the reunion.

“Hearing her story is always inspiring, to know that she had such an impact,” Baugh said about Tuggle. “She was a very strong, resilient woman. … The background of her … coming out of the Methodist Church, coming into the Church of Christ and really just being a major force in the church was very powerful.”

Harold Carr awards a commemorative plaque to Geraldine Tibbs, honoring her decades of work in organizing the Silver Point homecoming.

Geraldine Tibbs, who grew up at Silver Point and now lives in Memphis, invited Robinson to speak at the recent reunion at the request of Harold Carr, Donnell’s brother and chair of the homecoming committee.

Tibbs, 85, co-founded the Silver Point reunions with Silver Point’s Evelyn Buck, Harold Carr said.

Sitting on her front porch in the Middle Tennessee community of Silver Point, Evelyn Buck talks about her years growing up in the West End Church of Christ. Read more about the last of the ‘living water.’

“We were really a committee of two,” Tibbs said.

The organizer said that many Southwestern Christian College speakers had assisted with the reunions. Tibbs cherished the connection between Silver Point and Southwestern and longed for the homecomings to further the work of Southwestern, born of Bowser’s lifelong passion for educating Black Christians.

Following the group singing on Saturday afternoon, Harold Carr joined fellow committee member David Meek to present plaques to Buck and Tibbs in recognition of their years of work in organizing the reunions.

“I felt good,” Tibbs said. “I felt real proud that I did something … to help Silver Point.”

Silver Point guest Pam Scruggs, a member of Nashville’s Jackson Street Church of Christ, discusses the Silver Point hymnal with her 8-year-old granddaughter, Kennede Scruggs.

The Carrs’ older brother, Virgil, who traveled to the reunion from his home in Florida, referred to Tuggle’s unique testimony to the importance of women at Silver Point, the church cemetery and its rows of markers behind him as he spoke.

“She was ahead of her time,” Virgil Carr said about Tuggle.

Reunion guests enjoy a Sunday-afternoon potluck at the Silver Point Community Center near the historic Silver Point church.

“We sometimes forget, particularly in the Black … communities, the contributions of Black women,” he added. “You had some strong, strong Black women in this community who were not afraid to talk, not afraid to argue, not afraid to … compromise, not afraid to do a whole lot of things.

“I want to be buried up here, among our people,” Virgil Carr said. “I believe personally that the spirits of some of the people that died … are here.”

TED PARKS is a Nashville-based correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact letters@christianchronicle.org.

Find links to all the stories and related content below:

PART 1

• ‘We don’t have to settle for divide’: Restoration Movement Christians discuss their history of division — and the potential for unity. By Calvin Cockrell, reporting from Atlanta.

From left, Renaissance Church of Christ minister Orpheus Heyward moderates a panel on “The Reversal of 1906” with The Christian Standard publisher Jerry Harris, The Hills Church of Christ minister Rick Atchley and Lipscomb University Bible dean Leonard Allen.

• Editorial: The spirit of restoration: How the Restoration Movement was built on a desire to simply be Christians. By Jeremie Beller.

Barton W. Stone preached some of the core principles that would lead to the Restoration Movement at an 1801 revival at the Cane Ridge Meeting House in Kentucky.

PART 2

• Why counting the sheep is so difficult: A survey presses on toward the goal — an accurate accounting of Churches of Christ. By Cheryl Mann Bacon.

Previous editions of “Churches of Christ in the United States” sit on a bookshelf.

• Editorial: Why counting the sheep matters: Work on an updated census of Churches of Christ is challenging but beneficial. By Cheryl Mann Bacon.

Past directories of Churches of Christ in the U.S. are displayed.

PART 3

• ‘We lost our mission’: Churches of Christ must revive passion for winning souls, Arkansas conference declares. By Bobby Ross Jr., reporting from Little Rock, Ark.

Speaking on a panel at ReMission are, from left, are Jeff Cary of Lubbock Christian University in Texas; Monte Cox of Harding University in Searcy, Ark.; Garrett Best of Abilene Christian University in Texas; Jeremie Beller of Oklahoma Christian University in Oklahoma City; Garrett Best of York University in Nebraska; Leonard Allen of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn.; and Dyron Daughrity of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.

• Column: The road to ReMission: Drive to Arkansas conference affords time for snacks, trivia and dialogue on Christian unity. By Bobby Ross Jr., reporting from Little Rock, Ark.

Attendees praise God during the ReMission conference in Little Rock, Ark.

PART 4

• Small churches find right fit at Equip: Two-day conference at York University brings together leaders from the Midwest, the Plains and the Rocky Mountain states. By Bobby Ross Jr., reporting from York, Neb.

York University students and Equip Conference attendees gather for a chapel assembly in the university’s gymnasium.

• Column: Wind and worship: Stormy weather makes for eventful drive to York University’s Equip Conference. By Bobby Ross Jr., reporting from Wichita, Kan.

Stephen Maxwell leads singing during chapel at the Equip Conference at York University in Nebraska.

PART 5

• A ‘divine name’?: Is ‘Church of Christ’ a biblically mandated label or an optional descriptor? By Calvin Cockrell, reporting from Montgomery, Ala.

A sign denotes the meeting place of the National Road Church of Christ in Wheeling, W.Va.

GOT FEEDBACK or ideas for this special project? Email us at letters@christianchronicle.org.

But his British wife, Zoobi Jones, gave a quick, succinct reply to his suggestion that the couple use their savings to buy La Maison de Perrine — “The House of Perrine” in English.

“No,” she said.

Undeterred, Jerry — a longtime minister for Churches of Christ in England and California — brought God into the conversation.

“Don’t you think we should pray about it?” he asked.

Faith in France: Read all the stories in the special series

How could she say no to that?

“We did pray,” Zoobi recalled in an interview with The Christian Chronicle. 

“And I was saying, ‘Please, Lord, don’t let this happen.’ And he was saying, ‘Please, Lord, if it’s your will, let this happen.’”

This wasn’t the first time the Joneses found themselves on different pages.

Zoobi and Jerry Jones in the courtyard of La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

No ‘free ride’ for the American

Opposites attract.

“He’s the big visionary,” Zoobi, 73, said of her husband of 47 years. “I’m the practical one that nails it down. You need both. It’d be no good if we were both huge dreamers.”

In 1977, the American theology student met the British law graduate — she grew up two doors from future Beatle John Lennon in Liverpool — at England’s Oxford Church of Christ.

“The first Sunday I was there, I walked about 5 miles from outside of Oxford to find the Church of Christ,” said Jerry, now 71. “And she saw me, and I said, ‘Hey, can you give me a ride back?’ She said, ‘I’ve got a lunch appointment, and I can only take you half the way there.’

“It was true,” he added. “But it was also her way of saying, ‘I’m not going to let some smooth American just get a free ride.’”

The couple married the next year.

Caroline is Zoobi’s given name. Her nickname traces back to her childhood affection for Looby Loo, a character on the classic British children’s TV series “Andy Pandy.”

As a girl, Zoobi enjoyed vacation trips that took her family through France. So in 1992, the couple bought a summer farmhouse in northwestern France — about 20 minutes from the former convent they’d later own. 

At the time, Jerry served as the evangelist for the Oxford church. Their three children — Oliver, Bethany and Austin — were all under age 10.

American Jerry Jones ministered for Churches of Christ in England and California for 40 years.

Jerry, who earned degrees from the University of Southern California and Yale University Divinity School and did additional study at the University of Oxford, used extra income from teaching theology courses to pay for the second home.

The farmhouse soon became a place both to make memories with their young family and host Vacation Bible Schools for area children.

“The whole village would show up to see their kids, their neighbors’ kids, their grandkids act out David and Goliath or Daniel and the lion’s den,” Jerry said. 

The path to La Maison de Perrine

In 1995, the Jones family relocated to California.

For two-plus decades, Jerry served in various ministry roles in the Western state. For eight years, he also taught as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu.

Zoobi, meanwhile, chose to teach high school French instead of practice law. She began taking her California students on annual educational trips to the couple’s French farmhouse. Host families familiar with Jerry and Zoobi from VBS opened their homes to the students.

Zoobi Jones in the dining room of La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

“As the host families’ children grew up, and they no longer wanted to host people, we had to think, ‘Well, what should we do?’” Zoobi said. “So we thought of buying a place where they could all come.”

That search is how Jerry came across the listing for La Maison de Perrine.

For three centuries, the convent school served as a center of education in La Chapelle Au Riboul, shaping generations of girls in the rural village about 165 miles west of Paris.

The institution took its name from Perrine Thulard, born in 1654. At age 18, she followed her parents’ wishes and married a man named René Thulard.

“She obeyed, as one did in the 17th century, even though she really wanted to lead a life of celibacy as a nun,” Jerry and Zoobi Jones wrote in a brief history of La Maison de Perrine.

When the wealthy René died at 26, his young widow pursued the religious and charitable work she longed to do, caring for the sick and educating girls in the village.

The first school building went up in 1682 but only lasted until 1730, when a fire claimed everything except three arched stone doorways. The following year, the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Evron, the religious community Perrine founded, rebuilt the school. The reconstruction was finished in 1731, four years before Perrine died.

The gravestone for Perrine Thulard, founder of the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Evron, can be seen at La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

The French Revolution halted the school’s operations in 1794 when the government seized property and expelled the sisters. According to local historical accounts, two of the order’s members — Françoise Trehet and Jeanne Véron — refused to denounce their faith and were executed by guillotine. The surviving sisters came back in the early 1800s when they regained the property, resuming the work Perrine began.

A 20,000-square-foot quadrangle surrounding a courtyard anchors the property. The main three-story building is a labyrinth of 24 bedrooms, six staircases, multiple classrooms, a large conference room, a chapel, a library, a recreation room, a banquet hall and a dining room. Many, many hallways connect them all.

A nearby four-story building — constructed in 1958 for agricultural studies after the convent school became coed — offers additional space for instruction and living quarters. Another two-story building on the 3-acre site features two classrooms, stables and a garage, and it also encompasses a carriage house. 

Ornamental and vegetable gardens, fruit trees and berry vines frame the property and occasionally provide room for the laying hens to roam.

Chickens provide fresh eggs for La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

A perfect fit

Jerry knew La Maison de Perrine would be a perfect fit to house students for Zoobi’s summer school program.

But he had a bigger dream: a new Christian university for members of Churches of Christ in Europe.

Thanks to wise investing by his late father and himself, Jerry said, he had financial resources to devote to such a project. But the amount the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Evron sought was more than Jerry and Zoobi had to spend.

Jerry still wanted to submit a bid. Eventually, Zoobi gave him her blessing — only because she knew the sisters would reject it.

Or she thought she knew.

“Go make your offer,” she told him. “I’ll make dinner, and life will go on.”

When Jerry met with the order’s representative in December 2017, he was informed the sisters had a higher bid.

Then the woman paused.

“I’m thinking, ‘OK, we’re going to do something else with our retirement,’” Jerry said. “And then she said, ‘But because you are Christians … and you are both educators, we choose your offer.’ And, folks, that is a God moment.”

A view outside a back window of La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

No more money worries

Jerry and Zoobi declined to disclose the purchase price. 

They took ownership in August 2018 and — with the help of mission groups from the A&M Church of Christ’s Aggies for Christ in College Station, Texas, and the Legacy Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas — began making repairs. 

A new roof for the main building cost $125,000, they said.

“I used to worry about money and stuff like that,” Zoobi said. “I honestly don’t worry about it anymore because I know God’s behind it. And that’s a really relaxing, calming sort of feeling.”

Jerry said that doesn’t mean the Joneses are rich, but rather, “We’re very careful with our money.”

One example: They rely on old cars for transportation.

A plaque in a memorial garden celebrates the 300th anniversary of La Maison de Perrine in 1982.

He drives a 1994 Nissan Sunny with 187,000 miles and no power steering on rural French roads that twist and turn.

“I’m not sure how happy I am about that (lack of power steering),” Jerry joked after picking up a Chronicle writer in Le Mans — a city known for its 24-hour auto race and frequent sightings of fast, expensive cars.

A view inside the library of La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

‘Loving restoration’

Seven years of “loving restoration by the current owners with a little help from their friends” — as Zoobi described it — has brought La Maison de Perrine to a point where the Joneses plan to open the Christian university with 26 students in 2026. 

While the property has no debt, the Joneses said, they’ve exhausted their own funds. They need an estimated $400,000 to renovate the former agricultural building.

Even as they prepared to welcome students, the Joneses housed 18 Ukrainian refugees for months after the war with Russia started in 2022. 

Pilgrims on walking journeys through the French countryside often call to inquire about staying the night and are delighted when the couple not only feed and house them but also spend time getting to know them.

Trevor Williams, a longtime minister for Churches of Christ in England, is among those praying for what the Joneses have dubbed the International Institute of Arts and Sciences. (If that name sounds generic, Jerry said he’s hopeful a namesake benefactor will buy into the vision.)

“The Joneses have a dream that can improve the minds and lives of young people,” said Williams, a leader of the Ilkeston Church of Christ in the East Midlands of England.

Neighbors and friends enjoy lunch with the Joneses at La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

Like Williams, Sid Walker, an elder of the A&M church, has spent time with the Joneses at La Maison de Perrine, which is just south of the Normandy region and a two-hour drive from the U.S. cemetery where 9,400 World War II soldiers are buried. 

“They not only have the heart and the soul and the vision,” Walker said of Jerry and Zoobi, “but they also have the experience.”

“They not only have the heart and the soul and the vision, but they also have the experience.”

Mary DeMuth, a Texas-based literary agent and author of more than 50 Christian books, visited La Maison de Perrine recently. 

She came away impressed both with the Joneses and the rural setting.

“It definitely feels like village life,” DeMuth said. “You’re not getting, like, the cosmopolitan French experience. It’s definitely more countryside.”

Jerry Jones leads a tour of an old Catholic church across the street from the former convent school in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France.

New life for old school

La Maison de Perrine sits across the street from an aging Catholic church where a roving priest — assigned to multiple parishes because of religion’s decline in France — celebrates Mass each Thursday.

Jerry and Zoobi worship each Sunday in the chapel of the former convent school. The Church of Christ service draws anywhere from eight to 25 guests and neighbors, depending on the time of year.

The Joneses seek recently retired Christian professors or those on sabbatical to donate time to the new school. They expect to charge about $12,000 per year in tuition and fees. 

The chapel at La Maison de Perrine where Jerry and Zoobi Jones worship with guests and neighbors each Sunday.

And they’d love to hire a full-time president with extensive Christian higher education experience to oversee the university, which will offer studies in English but teach French to every student.

The school will offer courses in literature, languages, history, business, education and Bible, according to Jerry. As is typical with French universities, the institution will award a three-year undergraduate degree known in France as a “licence.” Jerry has had preliminary discussions about accreditation with an education ministry official. 

An avid sports fan, Jerry also intends to incorporate athletics into the program. After all, he coached American football at Oxford for four years.

“We never lost to Cambridge, so I am legendary at Oxford,” he joked.

If young men and women meet and fall in love — as tends to happen at Christian universities — he and Zoobi are cool with that, too.

But their biggest goal is this: training students who can return to their home congregations in the more than 40 European countries and help lead the work of Churches of Christ.

“Atheism and secularism and materialism have gone so far in Europe that we need to have really well-educated members,” Jerry said. 

Regardless of each student’s field of study, he said, “They’ll be able to teach a Bible class at their church. So when they go back to Switzerland or head off to Ireland, they’ll be able to say to the preacher, ‘I’m going to give you a break. You can take the next six weeks off, and I’m going to teach on Philippians.’”

Convent school founder Perrine’s spiritual testament was “to preserve charity, simplicity, unity and humility.”

Three centuries later, the Joneses pray that they can fulfill God’s mission in their own lives.

Jerry and Zoobi Jones have big plans to turn a former convent school into a Christian university for members of Churches of Christ in Europe.

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

How to help

The Joneses are accepting donations to help with the renovation of La Maison de Perrine.

La Maison de Perrine in La Chapelle Au Riboul, France, has a history dating back to the late 1600s.

At the other end, friends and strangers alike find a “house church.” 

That’s how missionary Craig Young describes the informal welcoming presence of Khaled and Djedjiga Hassani, the former monastery’s caretakers.

Faith in France: Read all the stories in the special series

“The door is always open, the coffee is always hot, and lives are always being touched,” Young said of the immigrant couple’s simple living quarters, where a small needlepoint portrait of Jesus hangs on the wall.

“There’s hospitality as a word,” the missionary added, “and then there’s what they do, which is a different level.”

On a recent morning, the former Muslims served a Kabyle omelet — a sweet, spongy cake made with eggs, flour and baking powder — as they welcomed a small group of visiting American church members.

Khaled and Djedjiga Hassani serve as caretakers for the former Betheline monastery, which is being renovated as a Christian outreach center.

While offering cups of tea and coffee, the hosts invited the guests to drizzle honey on the omelet and spread fig jam — homemade from trees on the Betheline grounds — on bread.

As Marseille’s Chapelle de Fuveau Church of Christ works to transform the dilapidated former monastery into a Christian outreach center, the Hassanis provide a mix of physical labor and spiritual encouragement.

“Khaled is a mechanic,” Young said of his best friend. “His father taught him mechanics in Algeria and taught him how to work on tractors, so now he just works on anything. He could probably do just about anything to a motor with a piece of wire.”

Djedjiga maintains the kitchen, drawing rave reviews for her culinary skills.

At age 8, she started cooking with her grandmother, preparing meals in a tiny casserole pot. Decades later, she has no problem feeding a handful of people — or three dozen.

“I grew up in a big family, so 30 people for us is nothing,” she said through a French interpreter. “I can make enough for them. It’s really not a big deal.”

Djedjiga Hassani enjoys cooking and serving groups large and small.

An answered prayer

As ethnic Berbers, an Indigenous people group in North Africa, Khaled and Djedjiga spoke Kabyle growing up.

An arranged marriage brought the two together a quarter-century ago.

As a young man, Khaled, now 55, served as a soldier in Algeria. He immigrated to France in 2001, a few months after the couple’s wedding. Djedjiga followed him to the Western European nation shortly afterward.

Soon after Khaled’s arrival in Marseille, he met people from the Chapelle de Fuveau church. A dinner invitation and a bowling outing led to him visiting the church and developing relationships with Christians, including missionaries Garth and Diana Hutchinson.

A discussion between Garth and Khaled turned to the differences between Christianity and Islam.

“It was getting a little tense,” Garth said of the conversation before a meal at the Hutchinsons’ home.

An arranged marriage brought Khaled and Djedjiga Hassani together. They consider it a match made in heaven.

Lightening the mood, the missionary told his Muslim friend, “I’m going to pray that one day you preach the Gospel in Algeria.”

Khaled laughed heartily at the suggestion.

For eight years, Khaled wrestled with what to make of Christianity.

If his children wanted to become Christians, he decided, that would be OK.

“But it’s not for me,” he told himself.

Later, he contemplated becoming a Christian but not telling anybody. Or maybe, he thought, he could be a Muslim and a Christian.

“But Jesus says you can’t serve two masters,” he said. “And there’s only one choice. I prayed as a Muslim about my decision to become a Christian.”

Finally, he gave his life to Jesus — despite the rift his conversion caused with extended family.

Khaled thanked the Christians in Marseille for their patience with him.

A small needlepoint portrait of Jesus hangs on the Hassanis’ living room wall.

But he’s far from alone. 

“Any (evangelistic) work in France is a long haul,” Diana Hutchinson said. “It took eight years for Khaled, but it’s just as long for other French people. They’re very suspicious, and they distrust religion. Because of the history of all the religious wars in France, they have a good reason for that.”

After Khaled’s baptism, Djedjiga told her husband, “I’m going to see if this Jesus changes anything.”

“I’m going to see if this Jesus changes anything.”

He changed everything.

“Khaled’s personality, his behavior, his patience all changed,” Djedjiga said. “He learned to listen, and now he has a heart for God.”

Besides needing to see Khaled’s transformation, Djedjiga required a better understanding of the Bible. As her French improved, the sermons she heard made more sense.

Some of the meals made by Djedjiga Hassani during a recent mission trip by American Christians to Marseille, France.

“It took me about 10 years,” she said, “to realize that God is God, Jesus is Jesus, and Jesus is my Savior.”

Two years after Khaled’s immersion, Djedjiga followed him into the baptistery.

Later, Khaled traveled to Algeria for his father’s funeral. While there, he visited a church not far from his village. The minister asked him to preach.

“As I was standing up, I thought about what Garth said,” Khaled said of his missionary friend’s prayer.

Immigrant Khaled Hassani and missionary Craig Young, pictured at the former Betheline monastery in Marseille, France, are best friends.

The meaning of forgiveness

Even as Khaled became a leader in the Chapelle de Fuveau church, his faith journey brought trials.

A decade ago, a car struck the Hassanis’ daughter Lili — the third of their four children — as she walked home from school. 

Then 10, Lili suffered serious injuries and required multiple surgeries.

“See what happens when you leave the Muslim faith,” he remembers some people telling him.

The woman whose inattention caused the collision never apologized. Khaled’s anger burned against her, and he sought compensation from her in a tribunal court.

But when an officer asked Lili in a legal proceeding if she wanted the woman to pay for what she did, the child replied, “I forgive her because I’m a Christian.”

“I forgive her because I’m a Christian.”

A hush fell over the hearing room, and Khaled had to decide quickly whether to continue with the case. 

“I realized I had spent eight years thinking about the decision to be baptized and then another eight years as a Christian,” he said, “but I hadn’t understood forgiveness.”

However, his daughter had.

“I told the officer, ‘You can just write down what she said.’”

Khaled Hassani, trained by his late father as a mechanic, can fix tractors and just about anything with a motor, missionary Craig Young says.

Khaled Hassani speaks at the Chapelle de Fuveau Church of Christ in Marseille, France.

A foundation laid

The Hassanis view their work at the Betheline as a calling.

In the renovation efforts, Djedjiga said, she sees God in action daily.

“It’s as if I’m reading the Bible,” she said, “and it’s happening live in front of me.”

A small group prays in the home of Khaled and Djedjiga Hassani, the former monastery’s caretakers.

As Khaled sees it, the outreach center — aimed at reaching lost souls — will build on a foundation already laid.

“I’m the fruit of a project like this,” he said. “I’m already that person.”

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

When Congress failed to pass a budget or continuing resolution, government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, began running out of money to fund programs and pay employees. The resulting government shutdown, now in its second month and the longest in U.S. history, left 1.3 million civilian government employees furloughed or still working but without pay.

As of Nov. 1, another 42 million people who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — known as SNAP — may be unable to buy groceries.

Rulings Friday by federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island require the USDA to use emergency funds and disburse them  “timely or as soon as possible.”

The orders don’t solve the problem, though, because the $5.5 billion available in emergency funds is far less than the $9 billion per month spent for the program. Moreover, facilitating funds distribution to states could take several days.

Tuesday, President Donald Trump threatened to withhold any SNAP funding until the end of the shutdown, though the administration later said it was “fully complying” with the court order to provide partial benefits. But how and when those benefits will be distributed remains unclear, leaving eligible families vulnerable in the meanwhile.

‘Called to be generous’

Patrick Odum, minister and elder of the Northwest Church of Christ in Chicago, said Christians need to respond “with compassion and generosity and grace.”

About 70 people come through the Northwest pantry every Saturday. Odum estimates more than half depend on SNAP benefits. According to USDA figures, 19.5 percent of SNAP funds go to adults over 60. Almost 40 percent go to children 17 and younger.

“People are in the situations they’re in for all sorts of reasons,” Odum said. “Not always entirely their own fault. And even if it is, we’re called to be generous and compassionate and show the love of Christ in the way we interact with people around us.”

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

Odum’s words were echoed by Christians across the country who run church pantries or larger Christian nonprofits and live out Jesus’ words through their ministries:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Jim Clark and Tamme Carroll help feed the hungry through Abilene’s Christian Service Center, which fills 156 food requests that vary in size based on the size of a family.

In Abilene, the Christian Service Center provides food, clothing, rent assistance, financial training, dental assistance and vouchers for gas and bus passes. More than a dozen churches and other Christian nonprofits operate pantries in this West Texas city of about 130,000, but the Service Center is the only one open five days per week.

In an average month, the center fills 156 food requests that vary in size based on the size of a family.

The Christian Service Center is the only food pantry in Abilene open five days per week.

Jim Clark, executive director, expects that number to grow.

“New people are coming who have never been here before,” he said. “Just yesterday and today, we had 10 new people.”

The Christian Service Center accepts walk-in clients on a recent Saturday.

Clark said even before the shutdown raised the specter of lost SNAP benefits, calls had increased.

“Some are real stressed out,” he said. “It seems like when people call, they’re more tense, more angry. Rent is going up.  Food prices are going up.”

Needing help for the first time

Rising grocery prices, rising rent, furloughs and layoffs stretch the resources of church pantries and Christian service providers even further.

Abilene is home to Dyess Air Force Base, which has about 500 civilian employees and another 670 with the National Guard and Reserve. Military members have not yet missed a full paycheck. Civilians are working without pay, and not just at the base.

The local United Way office has begun hearing from furloughed IRS employees, some with 20 years on the job.

Workers with the Christian Service Center sort bread and other donations.

In addition to the rising grocery prices, an influx of workers building a giant data center north of town has absorbed all the housing in an already tight market, causing a concomitant increase in rent.

Lynnda Brown, one of the receptionists who greets Christian Service Center clients when they arrive, has seen it, too.

“This week we’ve had a significant increase in phone calls from people asking how the food pantry works — because they’ve never had to use it and want to know the logistics,” she said. She was particularly moved by one single mom employed full time in the health care industry whose hands shook as she began filling out paperwork.

“I’ve never had to ask for help. I’m always the person giving help. I feel ashamed that I can’t take care of my family.”

The woman began to cry as she explained that after paying her rent and utilities, she didn’t have anything left for food. “I can’t keep up any more,” she told Brown.

“I’ve never had to ask for help. I’m always the person giving help,” she told the receptionist. “I feel ashamed that I can’t take care of my family.”

Prepared bags of food sit on shelves at the Christian Service Center in Abilene.

The Christian Service Center, now 60 years old, operates out of a sprawling 25,000-square-foot building formerly occupied by the Woodlawn Church of Christ, which closed. Regular support comes from multiple churches and a few local businesses to cover staff, overhead and food purchases from the local food bank. Clark said they have plenty of capacity.

Most ministries are smaller — often one church, one pantry, open one day a week.

‘You hate turning people away’

In Macon, Ga., Karen Hancock insists she doesn’t have a title, though she’s the volunteer who signs the contracts with the local food bank and organizes others to keep feeding the hungry through the pantry at the Thomaston Road Church of Christ.

She’s quick to explain that the weekly food distribution is funded entirely by private donations from some of the congregation’s 400 members and staffed by 10 to 12 volunteers each Wednesday evening.

On a recent Wednesday, cars began lining up at 2 p.m. The pantry doesn’t open until 5:30.

Volunteers pack bags at the Thomaston Road Church of Christ food pantry.

“We used to serve 10 a night. Now we’re serving 25, and last night 28 families. And we turned away at least 32 cars,” Hancock said.

“You hate turning people away, but we wouldn’t have any food for next week if we didn’t stop,” she explained, adding that they also try to close so volunteers can make it to midweek Bible study at 7.

Like Abilene, Macon is adjacent to a military base, just 20 minutes away. Robins Air Force Base’s workforce exceeds 22,000, but most — almost 15,000 — are civilians who aren’t being paid during the shutdown.

Lynn Collins stands next to shelves of canned goods at the Thomaston Road Church of Christ food pantry.

Hancock expects to see more cars waiting in line next Wednesday.

She recalled a woman who had arrived the week before with three kids in the car. She had lost her job during government downsizing in the spring and been evicted when she couldn’t pay rent.

“You see those kids just staring at us — and she was crying,” Hancock recalled. “Their clothes and everything were stuffed in the car, and that’s where they were living till they could get housing. We gave them what we could — they can’t cook anything. … You walk away from that and think there’s more help needed than we can give her.”

Massive impact

In Muscatine, Iowa, a town of just 23,000, the Church of Christ manages the Muscatine Mobile Food Pantry. At the congregation of about 120 members, 40 to 50 are involved with the ministry that also draws volunteers from the community.

Donny Anderson, minister, said they receive about 26,000 pounds of food per month from the area food bank.

It’s a new project for the congregation, as of Aug. 1 of this year. Previously, distribution had averaged about 325 families per month.

A reporter interviews Donny Anderson in front of a River Bend Food Bank truck.

“The first month we had it, it went to 434 then went to 508,” Anderson said.

Last month they served 521 families, and he believes the impact of SNAP cuts will push it much higher.

“In the last three months we have seen an increase from 300 to 500-plus, and if SNAP and WIC go away, how do we distribute milk products?” Anderson wondered.

Muscatine Mobile Food Pantry volunteers sort through pallets of donations.

WIC — Women, Infants and Children — is a smaller government program than SNAP. It provides healthy foods, nutrition education and breastfeeding support to low-income mothers and their infants and children up to age five.

“It’s going to be a massive impact,” Anderson added.

He used the word “massive” over and over.

“We are turning away people now, literally telling people at the end of month, ‘We’re out of food.’” Anderson said. “The impact of SNAP is a question mark. We just know it’s going to be massive. The food bank is trying to figure out how to provide more food, but how much is more?”

One can

Social media feeds have flooded with Christians in churches of all sizes reaching out, offering help, asking for help.

The Golf Course Road Church in Midland, Texas, announced it would give $50,000 to local community partners serving those most affected by the shutdown

Steven Hunter, minister at the Glendale Road Church of Christ in Murray, Kentucky, said that church has ordered 83 cases of beans and corn and a pallet of peanut butter and canned fruit to arrive next week for the blessing boxes it distributes throughout the community.

“We don’t generally order these, but given the shutdown, we’re trying to ramp up our giving,” Hunter said in an email.

In a Facebook post, Roger Moon, song leader at the congregation in Halletsville, Texas, population 2,700, made it personal:

“Everyone can afford to buy a can of food for 50 cents, right? This Sunday, bring groceries to your buildings. Don’t wait for the call, invitation. We need to compassionately step up!  Now — is the time!!  My daughter has a debilitating disease, ALS. Her husband is out of work. They lose $300.00 of grocery money next week. Could you afford to suddenly lose $300 in grocery money? …

“Take time to drop off one can in front of the doors of churches. Overwhelm churches with food. The Bible is clear!! We must help the poor. Don’t wait on the government to do what Christians should do. Love others! Do not let children go hungry, please.”

“We must help the poor. Don’t wait on the government to do what Christians should do. Love others! Do not let children go hungry, please.”

And far north of Halletsville, in Lewistown, Mont., ranchers are putting beef in a church basement freezer for folks who can’t afford meat.

Russell Epperson has served as the minister of the Central Montana Church of Christ there for 14 years.

The freezer filled up years ago when one rancher friend had extra ground beef. Epperson asked to buy 30 pounds, and the rancher said, “Here’s another 40 or 50 for the church.”

Russell Epperson stands beside a freezer full of donated beef at the Central Montana Church of Christ.

“It’s a real blessing to people,” Epperson said.

Eventually they had to get a bigger freezer. Other members who had extra beef added to the stash. Recently, a rancher who’s not part of the church contributed.

The distribution has been informal. Epperson tries to be involved in a lot of different benevolence efforts in town. And some of the church members are on SNAP benefits, too. Epperson expects the SNAP cuts to affect them.

“It’s just the church doing what the church does — finding folks in need and giving them food.”

It’s a simple thing in a small church. Epperson explained:

“It’s just the church doing what the church does — finding folks in need and giving them food.

“Last night I saw an elderly member at the grocery store who has a couple of daughters, and I said, ‘We have extra beef in the freezer.’”

“I could use that right now,” she said.

A lot of people could use that right now.

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

Christians in Glenmora, La., are supporting men recovering from substance abuse. Christians in Eastern Europe are welcoming refugees.

Christians in St. Lucia are celebrating the late Botham Jean by empowering youth, promoting social justice and supporting communities in need.

Claire Higginbotham (orange shirt) helps a Forever His camper get close to the pigs at the camp’s petting zoo.

That’s what we talked about when The Christian Chronicle’s Editorial Board met in October — in part because we’re exhausted.

We’re exhausted by violence, wars abroad and wars of words, especially between church members who should be able to find some common ground in Christ and him crucified — in the true religion of looking after orphans and widows in their distress and keeping ourselves unspotted by the world.

We really longed to share a positive message in this space, and so we chose to talk about Christians helping their neighbors and churches working together to help their communities — stories we love spotlighting. And as we talked, our brother Hamil Harris told us about Christians in Glenarden, Md., just outside the nation’s capital, who put up a sign inviting the community to an ice cream social.

And neighbors came. Neighbors who are Christian. Neighbors who are Muslim. Neighbors who were simply hungry for ice cream and community.

It went so well they’re planning a giveaway of lightly used items from church members and friends to anyone who needs them. To help their neighbors. In telling the story, Harris was clearly touched by what a diverse group of neighbors showed up.

It’s not a coincidence that when an expert in the law asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus told about a good Samaritan. Not a good Jew, a good Levite, a good son of Reuben or Joseph or Benjamin. A good Samaritan. To the Jews, a half-breed descendant of the Assyrians, ethnically and theologically impure.

Ukrainian and Russian refugees pray earlier this year during a Russian-speaking Bible class at the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston.

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Jesus made it clear. Being a neighbor was not about jots and tittles, not about agreeing about every single word of the Torah before offering a cup of cold water or helping some guy get his ox out of a ditch.

Do it for the least of these, he told them. Do it for the sick, the prisoner, the stranger. In doing so, you do it for me.

We know Botham Jean’s family still grieves his murderous loss. We know it often feels futile to deal with neighbors caught in substance abuse. We’re terrified by the stories of human trafficking victims. We know those Christians feeding the hungry get tired. But they’re still out there being neighbors.

“Being a neighbor can be tiring. But maybe it’s exactly the kind of tired we need to be. Not exhausted but tired. A good tired.”

The late John Lewis told his friends in the Civil Rights Movement to go out and get in “good trouble.”

Being a neighbor can be tiring. But maybe it’s exactly the kind of tired we need to be. Not exhausted but tired. A good tired.

So look for the helpers. They just might help you find a neighbor.

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

Featured image (above): Teens gather at the MannaFest youth rally in Oregon.

ALABAMA

FLORENCE — The Sherrod Avenue Church of Christ recently celebrated its centennial anniversary.

Addressing the themes of past, present and future, former ministers Cory Collins and Kerry Williams and current minister Justin Pannell spoke to the congregation at a trio of special services.

Christians gather for the Sherrod Avenue church’s centennial celebration.

Prerecorded video interviews with church members and a live panel session comprising current and former leaders guided the assembly in reflections on God’s faithfulness and ways the church has sought to love its neighbors through the last 100 years.

The baptism of a new brother in Christ served as a fitting conclusion to the weekend’s festivities.

The cornerstone of the Sherrod Avenue Church of Christ establishes its meeting place a century ago.

Sherrod Avenue began meeting as the North Florence Church of Christ and worshiped for two years in a local school building before moving to its present location and taking on its current name in 1925.

The congregation has been involved in multiple church plantings throughout its existence and been served by a number of standout preachers over the decades, including radio ministry pioneer C.C. Burns; preacher, historian and author John D. Cox; and Christian apologetics expert Kenny Barfield.

NEW YORK

HAUPPAUGE — More than 40 years after its founding — and through a construction process complicated by COVID-19 and rising building costs — the Long Island Church of Christ moved into its first permanent facility late last year.

For its recent Family Day, the 350-plus-member church welcomed more than 400 from its community to visit and learn about its ministries, including programs for people with disabilities and Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers.

More than 400 community members visit the Long Island Church of Christ in New York for Family Day

More than 120 church volunteers and community partners helped feed the group and put on activities including bounce houses, horseback riding and popcorn and cotton candy stations.

“It was wonderful to see the typical ‘80/20 rule’ be absolutely crushed and broken by the extensive number of hands in the body who were put to work and serving,” said Danny Aponte, Long Island’s deacon of communications.

Signs in English and Spanish welcome visitors to the Long Island church’s Family Day.

Church members gained 210 contacts from the event with whom they intend to follow up and plan Bible studies.

Read Bobby Ross Jr.’s 2023 feature on the congregation led by first-generation Christians at christianchronicle.org/longislandchurch.

OREGON

YAMHILL — For the fourth year, Camp Yamhill hosted MannaFest, a weekend youth rally. Teens from all over the Pacific Northwest gathered recently to enjoy times of worship, keynote speakers, classes and fun evenings together.

MannaFest is an outgrowth of Faith Quest, which ended in 2015. Seeing the need for another youth rally in the region, youth ministers collaborated on a new event to draw local youth groups to explore their faith and discuss difficult social and life issues from a biblical perspective.

MannaFest attendees gather under tents for classes.

Intimate tent classes on various subjects of faith separate MannaFest from other youth rallies, leaders said. This year’s event also included a special tent for kids to pray and read Scripture, meditating on God’s Word during their free time.

Zach Hailey, assistant director for Project Antioch, a discipleship program for youths, likened MannaFest to a revival in the Pacific Northwest.

“We have struggling churches here. … But we can also see the powerful way the Spirit is working in our teens,” he said. “God is doing something.”

NEWSMAKERS

BAPTIZED — LOVELY BEASLEY and VALLERI KOEHN of the Oakland Church of Christ in Southfield, Mich. LAURA BEHRENS of the Grand Strand Church of Christ in Surfside Beach, S.C. JOHN ECKLER of the Media Church of Christ in Pennsylvania. JOSH FITZPATRICK of the Church of Christ at Rio Grande in Bidwell, Ohio. ANDY LOWE of the Paintsville Church of Christ in Kentucky. IANN KENDALL and MINDY MEDINA of the Mangum Church of Christ in Oklahoma. JAMON MURRY of the Idaho Street Church of Christ in Selma, Ala. TYLER TUBBS of the Quail Valley Church of Christ in Batesville, Ark. EMIL VILLANUEVA of the Karangalan, Cainta Church of Christ in the Philippines.

From left, Joel “Tomás” Banks, Denise Hamilton and Jimmy Holland

HONORED — JOEL “TOMÁS” BANKS with the Woodward Heart of a Servant Award by Let’s Start Talking for “selfless and exceptional service to the Kingdom of God.” Banks has served as a missionary in Buenos Aires, Argentina, since the early 1970s. Since 1996, LST has sent 126 teams to serve in Buenos Aires with the Caballito Church of Christ where Banks serves. “Joel is a humble, faithful, and gifted friend to the Kingdom,” said Craig Altrock, LST executive director. ALLEN BLACK with a festschrift, “Teaching God’s Sons and Daughters” with contributions by his former students. Garrett Best and Lance Hawley edited the book. Black is professor emeritus of New Testament at Harding University in Searcy, Ark. DENISE HAMILTON with a Distinguished Alumni citation by Abilene Christian University in Texas. Hamilton is an author, speaker and founder of WatchHerWork.com. JACOB HUFF, kicker for the Faulkner University (Montgomery, Ala.) football team, as Special Teams Player of the Week for the Mid-South Conference after breaking the school record with field goals from 50 and 48 yards.

From left, Klint Pleasant and Robin Smith

APPOINTED — BEN HAYES, elementary counselor for Mars Hill Bible School in Florence, Ala. JIMMY HOLLAND, associate minister for the Wetumpka Church of Christ in Alabama.

NAMED — TERRY BUNNELL to the Kentucky Tennis Hall of Fame. Bunnell, a longtime tennis coach, is a graduate of Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn. As a student, he helped establish a high school tennis program at Chester County High School. KLINT PLEASANT to the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan Hall of Fame. Pleasant is head men’s basketball coach and senior vice president at Rochester Christian University in Rochester Hills, Mich. ROBIN SMITH, Alumnus of the Year by Columbia Academy in Tennessee. Smith, a lifelong educator, is principal of Baker Elementary School in Columbia.

He and his wife, Mary, arrived in their RV eight and a half years ago to pursue nontraditional cancer treatments, which Clay believes cured him.

Clay and Mary Mason

They initially felt unwelcome at the local Church of Christ. But they created a church community as they began serving the city’s poor and homeless, many of whom also lived in or near the Masons’ RV park.

On Thanksgiving Day 2017, “we noticed these people weren’t tourists,” Clay Mason said, “so we fed about 55 people that day.”

Thus began The Way, a church without doors to serve people without homes. A half-dozen or so local churches provide volunteers or financial support, including the Church of Christ where Clay and Mary now feel entirely welcome.

The congregation has opened its doors as a warming center during cold spells. Members volunteer, and the minister helps serve breakfast on Sunday mornings.

“We attend the midweek service and fellowship with members there, but this ministry is 24/7,” Clay said.

“Since we’ve started doing this and I became president of the ministerial alliance, the homeless people have access to two hot meals a day thanks to the Church of Christ and the Catholic soup kitchen.”

A half-dozen or so local churches provide volunteers or financial support to feed Trinidad’s homeless population.

Until just recently, the church met for worship in the park. That’s also where Clay served breakfast daily and a Sunday meal. After the city demanded insurance and permit fees that were well beyond what Clay could afford he decided “to give Caesar back his park.”

He relocated the worship service and Sunday meal to the Lutheran church playground. Daily breakfasts are still distributed at the park because too many folks come for breakfast who have disabilities preventing them from climbing the hill to the play area. He expects to be ticketed at some point.

“I do a short devotional — about 10 minutes — because they’ve got the attention span of a guppy. Most are addicts or alcoholics,” Clay said.

“I do a short devotional — about 10 minutes — because they’ve got the attention span of a guppy. Most are addicts or alcoholics.”

Support comes from friends and family — many in Texas where he grew up and used to preach — in monthly checks of $100 or $200, occasionally up to $500.

The Masons still live in their RV and prepare 85 meals a day in its kitchen.

‘Addiction doesn’t care what church you go to’

Just over 1,000 people live in Glenmora, La., 25 miles south of Alexandria. Five churches there and from nearby Oakdale have worked together to create a Christ-centered recovery ministry for men fighting substance abuse and addiction. Justin Simmons has preached 14 years for the Church of Christ with about 80 members.

“I think for my church, and I’m sure others, it humanized people with addiction,” Simmons said. “Maybe even church-going people kind of look at addicts as not human beings — though they would never say that.

Youths from the Glenmore Church of Christ serve a meal at a weekly recovery meetings hosted by Grace Christian Center.

“But when they get to interact with these guys when they’re sober, they see they’re just like us. They have skills, they’re good carpenters or welders or plumbers.”

Each church in the cooperative fills a role. The Church of Christ feeds the men on Wednesday nights and sends leftovers home with them. They attend one church on Sunday morning, another Sunday evening and rotate Wednesday nights. Ministers take turns doing a daily 5 a.m. devotional before the men are picked up for work.

From right, Justin Simmons fellowships with Bishop Gerald Simon of Grace Christian Center and Pastor Greg Willis of Christ’s Church of Oakdale at Overdose Awareness 2024.

Simmons said no one seeks credit for the rare and hardfought successes:

“If they succeed and wind up in a pew, we see it as a win. If they find Christ and through him stay sober and connect to a church and grow spiritually and put back into community — that’s a win.”

“I don’t think it would have worked this long if we didn’t keep Jesus at the center of it,” Simmons said. “It’s easy for churches to see each other as competitors — but addiction doesn’t care what church you go to.”

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

“Jesus loves you, too, sir!” said the TSA agent as I stepped into the airport scanner and held up my arms (a posture of surrender, appropriately enough). As I stepped out, the agent said, “If more people believed that, this world would have a lot less problems.” Preach!

I got the shirt while visiting The Park Church of Christ in Tulsa, Okla. Church members, non-members and high school kids were doing a service project for Feed My Starving Children, bagging up nutritious meals for families in Africa while yelling, “PROTEIN! VEGETABLES! SOY! RICE!”

It’s become my airport shirt. Every time I travel, someone points it out — mostly airline employees, and our time together is so brief that I don’t get the chance to say more. But maybe it sparks a thought or plants a seed that will one day grow.

Volunteers wearing hairnets, plastic gloves and T-shirts that said “Jesus You” filled and seal plastic bags labeled MannaPack at the Park Church of Christ in Tulsa, Okla.

T-shirts need not be overt to be evangelistic. I remember a singer/songwriter named John Fischer who spoke to the Savannah Christian Church (now Compassion Christian) when I worked for the daily newspaper in Georgia. He talked about the Christian’s call to be “in the world, not of the world” and the difficulty of striking that balance.

Some believers, in an attempt to reach the lost, act so much like them that it’s hard to tell the difference. I had friends in college who thought that accompanying their friends to bars was a chance to witness to them by practicing moderation, setting a good example. It never worked. The result: “In the world and of the world.”

There’s an opposite temptation as well, Fischer said, and it’s a struggle for me right now. Sometimes, our only close friends are Christians.

We wear Christian T-shirts and listen to Christian music as we jog to the Christian bookstore. We’re not “of the world,” but we’re barely even “in the world.”

Fischer, like me, has a lot of Christian T-shirts. But his most evangelistic T-shirt doesn’t say anything about Christ. All it says is “Zildjian.”

At the airport in Sofia, Bulgaria, Erik Tryggestad meets Steve Rice of Oskaloosa, Iowa, who traveled to the European nation as part of a mission trip to train Bulgarian evangelists.

That’s a brand of cymbals. He got the shirt free when he bought some for his drum kit. Once, when riding a subway and wearing the shirt, a fellow drummer pointed it out.

“What kind of music do you play?” the drummer asked. And a conversation about Christ followed — brought to you by the good folks at Zildjian.

“Our T-shirts are more evangelistic than we realize, whether they say something about Jesus, “Star Wars,” knitting, the Texas Rangers or the NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder.”

Our T-shirts are more evangelistic than we realize, whether they say something about Jesus, “Star Wars,” knitting, the Texas Rangers or the NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder.

Are we willing to let them speak — and to take the next step when they do?

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org.

KERRVILLE, TEXAS — The stories leave us breathless. The pictures stop our hearts. We’ve been here before. We don’t ever want to come here again. But we will. And so we refuse to be comforted.

When the Guadalupe River mutated from a swift-flowing stream to a marauding wall of water leaving death in its rubble, we rushed to our phones, checked our texts, scrolled through social media feeds.

The photos and stories resurfaced a nauseous dread we had buried beneath the scars of tragedies past.

Especially in Texas.

In part because the Guadalupe is a Texas river and only a Texas river, born of three branches in Kerr County that emerge from springs of the Edwards Aquifer, pure and cold. It bisects our capital city of Austin. It cools swimmers and kayakers in the summer. And in early July, it killed our children.

The Guadalupe is ours. So the betrayal runs deep.

I know. The story — and the pain — are not uniquely Texan. But we feel it because it’s close. Because, as Chris Carrillo, pulpit minister for the Riverside Church of Christ in Kerrville, told me that weekend, “We are all just one degree of separation from someone who was lost.”

“It may not have affected us,” the young minister said, “but it has directly affected all of us.”

“Our voices join the cries of others, weeping for their children. … We are overwhelmed by the little ones whose smiling faces seem to transform against our will into the faces of our own children and grandchildren.”

Sadly, we are not alone. Our voices join the cries of others, weeping for their children. We remember the tiny white socks on the feet of Baylee Almon, carried by a firefighter from the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing. We remember the victims of Columbine and Sandy Hook and Uvalde.

Do we remember the children of Gaza? Of South Sudan? Of Kyiv? Do we remember the young Vietnamese girl fleeing naked from the napalm? And do we remember she was one of many? Have we forgotten the children of Africa, born with AIDS or taken by malaria? Do we remember Rachel’s children, slain by a madman in search of a messiah?

Or do we only remember children who look like our own?

Campers from the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston pray during Camp Bandina last week.

In fairness, adults lost in disasters were beloved, too — by a parent or child, a spouse or friend. But we are overwhelmed by the little ones whose smiling faces seem to transform against our will into the faces of our own children and grandchildren.

Christians ask, “Why?” So do unbelievers. And we would be fools to pretend we can offer an answer. Yes, God is good, all the time. We plead in prayer to believe that more confidently. But the world is scarred and enraptured with the evil one. And for now, we are stuck in this world.

“The creation groans,” Paul wrote in Romans. And sometimes it shakes. It burns. It floods. Sometimes its creatures are selfish, unfaithful and mad.

So until we are set free from this “enslavement to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” the best we can do is refrain from platitudes, hold each other up and do our feeble best to protect all of Rachel’s children.

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

This July 2025, the Crusade for Christ returns and up to 2,000 Church of Christ members from around the U.S. will converge on Detroit to feed the hungry, heal the sick, knock on doors and participate in "marketplace ministry" for five days.

In this episode, Leonardo Gilbert, national director of the Crusade for Christ talks about why personal evangelism among strangers still works, even in a social media age when everyone seems to be afraid of "stranger danger."

Link to the Crusade for Christ event website

Link to The Christian Chronicle's archive coverage of past Crusade for Christ e events 

Donate to support this ministry of "information and inspiration" at christianchronicle.org/donate

Send your comments, ideas, and suggestions to podcast@christianchronicle.org

• Tiny houses, big mission: Texas churches collaborate across traditional boundaries to serve patients and families.
  

  a tiny house is shown in Abilene, Texas. It’s one of the Houses for Healing that the Hillcrest Church of Christ helps provide.

• ‘We’re all on the same side as Jesus’: Churches cross boundaries to serve their communities — and each other.

Christians from churches in Snyder Texas fellowship together at a ministerial alliance meeting.

• Work in the community, works of faith: Predominantly Hispanic or Black churches tend to be selective when working with outside groups, ministers say.

Whiz Kids visit the Science Museum Oklahoma for their spring fling.

• Alliances serve those facing homelessness, addiction: Churches of Christ participate in efforts to feed and evangelize vulnerable groups.

A half-dozen or so local churches provide volunteers or financial support to feed Trinidad’s homeless population.

• Connecting through prayer: Preacher left congregational role to lead churches in service to Lakewood, Colo.

Twice a year Lakewood Connects gathers civic, education, business and faith influencers to “make new connections, share stories and build more hope fuel to spread around.”

• ‘Doing good in Jesus’ name’: Ministerial alliances build up member churches and meet community needs.

Just Lead is a Knoxville after-school program that brings about 65 kids to the Laurel church building from high poverty schools.

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

Donny Anderson

Donny Anderson has been involved in ministry alliances, often in leadership roles, everywhere he’s preached — in Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and, for the last four and a half years, Iowa, at the Muscatine Church of Christ.

The city of about 27,000 sits southeast of Cedar Rapids just across the Mississippi River from Illinois. Anderson participates in an informal alliance of nine Baptist, Christian, nondenominational and Bible churches. They just get together to eat and talk.

“Sometimes you need to talk to somebody and blow off steam,” Anderson said. “These guys know what you’re going through because they’re going through it, too.”

‘Unite around things that unite us’

Other common threads include sharing pulpits during community-wide Holy Week services and combined worship at Thanksgiving or other special occasions such as baccalaureates. In small towns in particular, the ministerial alliance may be the point of contact for feeding the hungry, organizing disaster aid or distributing clothing and school supplies.

Ministers in alliances talk about meaningful prayer time, deep friendships and a safe space to share the hard times ministers have in common.

Kent Jobe

Kent Jobe has only been minister of the Downtown Church of Christ in Searcy, Ark., for three years, but work with the local alliance has become his “favorite thing in ministry.”

He was president last year and will be again in 2026. About 40 to 50 ministers attend the second Wednesday breakfasts. Jobe describes the group as “a good mix” of Baptists, Methodists, Assemblies of God and others … who really like to be together,” including ministers for six or seven other Churches of Christ.

In addition to bringing preachers together, Jobe said it’s brought the community of Christians together. One of the things he’s most proud of is 40 Days of Prayer.

From Oct. 1 through Nov. 9, 40 different ministers write a prayer prompt on 40 different topics.

The alliance and activities it created for church members have made it “beneficial to play with others,” he added, “to unite around things that unite us instead of divide us.”

‘Standing together … side by side’

Friendship between four large church leaders in Midland, Texas, led to a pulpit swap that landed the friends on the “CBS Evening News.”

Midland, a city of almost 140,000, has a ministerial alliance largely populated by large community and Bible churches. Allan Stanglin, who preaches for the 400-member Golf Course Road Church of Christ, is not an alliance member. Neither are the ministers at First Baptist, First Methodist or First Presbyterian.

Members of the Golf Course Road Church of Christ in Midland, Texas, serve with Christmas in Action to repair a local home.

They’re just friends who began getting together for lunch once a month to pray for each other. From that friendship sprang a plan to swap pulpits on the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2024. That made the national news. But what Stanglin and the others are more excited about is 4Midland, a collaboration of the largest churches from each fellowship.

In a big, splashy oil town, where big events in stadiums and arenas have been popular with the other alliance, 4Midland aims to eschew the splash.

The four friends asked, “What if our churches made commitments to each other in prayer, and standing together served the community, side by side, over a sustained, long, faithful period of time? Might that make a difference?”

‘Needs get met much quicker’

Josh Yeager became lead minister in 2020 for the 4th and College Church of Christ in tiny Cordell, Okla., population 2,700.

Like Jobe, Anderson and others, Yeager serves as president of Cordell’s ministerial alliance that includes ministers from Baptist, Mennonite Brethren, Assemblies of God, Lutheran and Bible churches.

Josh and Jennifer Yaeger

Four times a year, churches from the alliance meet together for worship and take up a collection to provide support for families who may need help with bills after sickness, job loss or other difficulties. Alliance members also “tag team” leading a devotional at a nursing home and launched an online care portal to provide support for foster families.

“People used to go to every single church seeking help,” he said. “Now we can ask our whole network of seven churches. Needs get met much quicker.”

“People used to go to every single church seeking help. Now we can ask our whole network of seven churches. Needs get met much quicker.”

Just as important to Yeager, these efforts have brought together Christians throughout Cordell. He sees Church of Christ members having a “less standoffish persona” than in the past.

“People are not being territorial,” he said. “We’re all on the same side as Jesus and realize different flavors are for different people, and that’s OK.”

‘We have grown … because people know us’

Scott Elliott has served as president of the ministerial alliance in LaGrange, Texas, midway between Austin and Houston, for six years. When Hurricane Harvey hit the town of 4,500 in 2016, the alliance coordinated relief efforts, a role the Red Cross or other nonprofit would take on in a larger city.

Scott Elliott

Typical of Texas’ German country, Lutheran and Catholic churches are the largest in town and participate with 12 other churches in the alliance, including the LaGrange Church of Christ where Elliott preaches.

“It’s brought great benefits to me as a minister to get to know the community,” he said. Though the church was initially hesitant, now members are also involved.

“Why would we not join with others, especially in the things we agree upon like helping the needy, serving the poor?” he added. “We have not compromised any of our beliefs, but we have grown as a church because people know us.”

Feeding the hungry, swapping pulpits

Though the city is bigger than LaGrange, the East Side Church of Christ in Snyder, Texas — midway between Lubbock and Abilene — greets a similar crowd of 100 or so on Sunday mornings.

Minister Tim Brown, who moved to West Texas from Nashville four years ago, leads a ministerial alliance of 35 churches.

Christians from churches in Snyder Texas fellowship together at a ministerial alliance meeting.

The alliance runs a community kitchen, weekly food cupboard and program to feed the poor and homeless two to three times a week. A utility ministry helps people with light and water bills. A free store for anyone in the food lines offers toiletries, toys, blankets and other basics. Alliance churches work with local schools to provide backpacks and school supplies for kids in Scurry County.

The 37th Street Church of Christ in Snyder does not participate in the alliance. Jason West, an elder of the congregation, said that’s largely because of doctrinal differences with other fellowships.

“As the more conservative congregation in town, having other ministers say prayers, speak, having musical instruments at the service or potentially having women serve in those roles was uncomfortable at the time to get on board with,” West said.

“As the more conservative congregation in town, having other ministers say prayers, speak, having musical instruments at the service or potentially having women serve in those roles was uncomfortable at the time to get on board with.”

“Is 37th opposed to helping the community? Of course not,” he added, citing an instance in June when the church fellowship hall was opened to provide respite for first responders from Lubbock who came to the town when three members of a local family were murdered.

Just 73 miles east of Snyder, Wes Horn, minister for the Orient Street Church of Christ in Stamford, Texas, preaches to about 80 Christians on Sundays. He’s been there 23 years and in the ministerial alliance just as long.

In addition to community worship services at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, churches host a joint Vacation Bible School each summer, rotating buildings.

“If we host, a preacher from another congregation will preach,” Horn explained. “So I’ve preached at three different Baptist churches, the Cowboy church, Lutheran church and Methodist church, and they’ve all preached at Orient Street over the years. …

“As a small town, we sit with these people at every ball game, Little League, every community event — now we’re neighbors in all aspects, not just school or work but faith.”

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

The tree’s base, which measured more than 6 feet long, was firmly lodged there by water from the rising Medina River on the Texas Hill Country camp’s exit bridge. 

Bandina — a Christian youth camp in Bandera, Texas, associated with Churches of Christ — is 30 miles from Camp Mystic, the riverside Christian camp for girls that experienced severe flash flooding this past weekend, resulting in the deaths of 27 campers and staff. 

While the two camps are physically close, Bandina manager Elaine Stotts said her camp — more than 100 feet uphill from the Medina River — was never in danger.

“The Guadalupe does not feed into the Medina,” Stotts said. “It is spring-fed up at what they call North Cross. Now, we do get rises in the river when we get a lot of rain at the North Cross. Our river did come up, but it wasn’t anything compared to what it was in 2002.”

Water races under the bridge over the Medina River leading to Texas Highway 16. The river is about 100 feet downhill from Camp Bandina.

Emergency plan

That year, the camp had evacuated through a 3-mile trail on property owned by surrounding ranches after severe flooding. 

After high water on nearby highways marooned campers that July, the electricity failed. About 400 campers and staff members walked to a highway and were bussed about 25 miles to Kerrville, Texas, to meet their families, The Christian Chronicle reported at the time.

The trail is now a part of Bandina’s emergency plan. After the evacuation, the camp signed an agreement with the ranches, allowing campers one-way access through the rugged terrain in the event the camp lost food, water or electricity.

None of that occurred this early July, as Bandina hosted 96 adults and 256 campers from 10 churches. A majority of the campers were from Texas, but some hailed from Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma. The camp also welcomed visitors from South Africa and held Bible classes in Ukrainian for refugee campers.

The Medina River rose to cover the bridge leading out of the camp to a highway, but the water subsided by the time the camp normally would have ended. 

All that prevented campers from departing was the fallen tree — but not for long.

Stotts “came down, called the county, and within two minutes the county had a front-end loader there,” said Tom Kimmey, Bandina’s co-director and youth minister for the Buckingham Road Church of Christ in Garland, Texas. “Didn’t even slow down, just drove straight on the road, pushed the tree out of the way.”

So the emergency route was not needed, and buses left the camp’s property on time.

“We had the buses in and the kids gone by 10:30 Saturday morning,” Stotts said. “The next group is already in.”

Still, the heavy rain brought a rush of emotions. 

Quincey Spurlock serves as a youth leader and the girls’ youth minister for the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston, which sent a group of 137 children and adults to Bandina this past week.

Spurlock was a counselor for a ninth to 12th-grade girls’ cabin. One afternoon during rest time, she worried about the rain while her campers were playing.

“I was sitting on my bunk … and the girls in my cabin are just laughing and talking with each other, and in my mind, all that I’m thinking is, ‘What am I going to do if somehow the river does reach our cabin?’ because we’re the closest cabin to the river,’” Spurlock said. “Thankfully, it never did. … We were safe the whole time.”

Shawn Freeman, youth and bridge minister for the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston, stands next to an uprooted tree that washed onto a bridge during flooding near Camp Bandina.

‘Trying not to watch the news’

On a normal week, campers stroll down the road to the Medina River to swim and play 9 Square. 

But the heavy rain that began on Thursday, July 3, caused the river to swell, forcing camp staff to cancel swim time Friday afternoon and move some outdoor activities indoors.

Taylor Colliander, a high school senior from the Memorial church, said camp leadership was open and honest about the rain.

“Whenever they got new information, they would make sure to inform us,” Colliander said. “We could ask questions, and then they would be completely honest. We knew that if something really serious happened, they would tell us.”

The staff decided to withhold information about Camp Mystic from the campers to avoid panic. 

But that did not stop the staff from grieving. Kimmey said the staff paused when they heard the news.

“We could ask questions, and then they would be completely honest. We knew that if something really serious happened, they would tell us.”

“We stopped what we were doing, prayed for them, because we were fully aware we were not in a great situation, but we were not at risk,” Kimmey said. “We were just inconvenienced.”

Spurlock said seeing the number of people missing at Camp Mystic was heartbreaking.

“I have been trying not to watch the news because it feels a little traumatizing,” Spurlock said. “The number of people keeps rising every day. … We’re very thankful and blessed that we were not hit as bad as some of these other people were.”

Campers from the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston offer a prayer of thanksgiving after returning home safely from Bandina. They asked God to be with the loved ones of those killed during recent flooding in central Texas.

ANDREW RENEAU is a summer intern for The Christian Chronicle. He is a senior multimedia journalism major at Harding University in Searcy, Ark. He is a member of the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston and has attended Camp Bandina both as a camper and as a counselor.

They disembark from massive cruise ships to snorkel among the corals of West Bay, zipline over the South Shore canopy and visit the two- and three-toed sloths at Gumbalimba Park.

Rarely, if ever, do they set foot in “El Suampo,” an impoverished community tucked away in Coxen Hole, Roatán’s largest city and the capital of Honduras’ Bay Islands.

Resident of Coxen Hole, Honduras, go about their lives on a hot Saturday afternoon.

Some people call it “Swamp Hole,” says Johnny Solis Jr. as he drives past a row of simple wood-slat and metal-roof homes. His white, flatbed truck kicks clouds of dust into the air. It’s the tail end of the dry season. When the rains come, the streets often flood. Hence the name. Some of the homes here are built on top of the remnants of others that collapsed and sank into the sandy soil.

Until it rains, water is a precious commodity here. Tourists pay $4 per bottle for it at their hotels, but some schools on Roatán have water only one or two days per week. Some are forced to stop classes when their bathrooms become unusable.

That’s where Solis and his father, Johnny Sr., come in. As he drives past a school building in Coxen Hole, Johnny Jr. points to a large, black water tank connected to a series of tubes. The Solises, both natives of Roatán and construction workers, assembled a catchment and pumping system that provides the school with clean water — daily.

Johnny Solis Jr. and Sr.

The father-and-son team builds water systems for schools and clinics across the island with assistance from Christian Relief Fund, a nonprofit supported by Churches of Christ. Donnie Anderson, a Honduras-based worker with the ministry, supervises the projects.

“We definitely work in all the places tourists would not go to on purpose,” said Anderson, a self-described handyman and builder from Texas. Anderson participated in multiple mission trips to Honduras before moving to the Central American nation about 12 years ago. He and his Honduran-born wife, Dana, and their son live in Campamento, a small city in central Honduras’ Olancho state. They oversee Christian Relief Fund projects there.

Donnie Anderson

During the summer months, mission teams from Churches of Christ flock to mainland Honduras. Dozens of men’s ministries, medical brigades and youth groups build homes, paint schools, pull teeth and feed the hungry in cities from the capital, Tegucigalpa, to Campamento to San Pedro Sula. After long days of sweaty labor in the Honduran sun, many Christians retreat to Roatán to spend a day or two on the beach before heading home.

Anderson and Bobby Moore, Christian Relief Fund’s vice president for global operations, have accompanied groups on those trips.

But visits to admire Roatán have also become “a mission to serve its children,” Moore said. “Partnering with local friends who care deeply about their community, we have seen places and needs we never would have known otherwise.”

Safe water, safe schools, microloans

The 110,000 people who live on the island have plenty of needs, especially the Garifuna, descendants of West African and Caribbean people exiled by the British from St. Vincent to Roatán in 1797. More than two centuries later, “many of the areas the Garifuna live in are (in) abject poverty and despair,” Anderson said, “so we have been led to focus there.”

A tank provides water for a school in Coxen Hole, Honduras.

Anderson launched a nongovernmental organization on Roatán, Innovative Faith-Based Projects, and started working with the Solises. The NGO has completed 17 water projects, 11 with assistance from Christian Relief Fund. Anderson also partners with Bill Drury of Pura Vida Agua to develop safe water systems in communities near some of the schools where they’ve installed tanks and pumps.

The projects “remind us that, sometimes, the greatest gift we can give is as simple as a glass of water in Jesus’ name,” Moore said, “so others can experience the hope of a true paradise.”

In addition to the water projects, Anderson said, “we have helped rebuild some unsafe houses that had many children and were in danger of collapsing during rainstorms. We have remodeled two schools and made them safer and secure.”

A member of the Sandoval family works at the pulperia funded in part by Innovative Faith-Based Projects.

The NGO recently made a microloan (a small loan with little or no interest rate) to Miguel Sandoval and his family of six. Sandoval works as a sailboat captain on Roatán, and his family operates a pulpería, a small grocery store.

“I express my sincere gratitude for the help … and thanks to God,” Sandoval said. “We were able to give the business a boost, and we hope to grow more, to take advantage of the blessing we received.”

“I express my sincere gratitude for the help … and thanks to God. We were able to give the business a boost, and we hope to grow more, to take advantage of the blessing we received.”

At the beach, on a mission

Mission teams, including students, also participate in ministry during their time on Roatán, said Dudley Chancey, a longtime youth ministry professor at Oklahoma Christian University and member of the Memorial Road Church of Christ in Oklahoma City. For 28 years, he’s brought mission teams to the island after a week of hard work on mainland Honduras.

“While relaxing on a beautiful beach is a good thing, we have managed to partner with several people on the island to teach about Jesus in some private schools, do a Friday Vacation Bible School for street kids and serve them a home-cooked meal,” Chancey said. “We have also done clinics and Bible schools in two of the ‘swamp’ communities on the island.”

Members of the Gateway Church of Christ in Pensacola, Fla., have participated in missions during their time on Roatán. Youths from the congregation, including Zoe Lewis, served at a day care for underprivileged kids.

Zoe Lewis plays with children at Crystal’s Day Care on the Honduran island of Roatán.

“There were so many children (who were) just so happy to share and have you there with them,” said Lewis, who graduated from high school last year. 

“It was the most fulfilling experience I have ever had,” said Lewis, who also worked with families on the island who had little in the way of possessions, but lots of love and joy nonetheless. That’s “a perspective I never would have found without this trip.”

Christians from Florida build a hillside home in Roatán.

Gateway members have volunteered at Clínica Esperanza, a nonprofit medical mission. They’ve also done outreach in two locales that most certainly aren’t on any tourists’ must-see list — a jail and a dump.

Braidon English, who graduated from high school in 2023, helped build a home on the island for a family in need.

After spending a week working in Tegucigalpa, a mission team from Oklahoma Christian Academy walks to dinner on the Honduran island of Roatán.

The sun and sand were nice, he said, but “seeing the Holy Spirit move in the hearts and lives of the Honduran people was inspiring.”

“You are at the beach, but you are still on mission.”

Chancey added, “People on the island need to hear the story of Jesus. We tell our groups, ‘You are at the beach, but you are still on mission.’”

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org.

It’s close-knit like a real family.

That’s how Ernestine Jones, 77, a longtime member of the Arlington Church of Christ, describes the Washington, D.C.-area congregation’s new approach to communion.

“You actually get to see the person right in front of you,” said Jones, a retired federal government worker.

Ernestine Jones, right, greets Lindsey Smith and her son, Ansel, as church members gather around the communion tables.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the 85-year-old congregation — just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital — has strived to make the Lord’s Supper more meaningful.

Church members no longer sit with heads bowed as they partake of the emblems.

In fact, the congregation — formed in the World War II era — removed entire rows of pews at the center of the auditorium. That modification made room for simple rectangular tables.

On a recent Sunday, nine gold communion trays rested atop purple tablecloths, providing a colorful backdrop for the commemoration of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection.

Minister Chess Cavitt preached a message emphasizing the importance of the Lord’s Supper before worshipers — about 50 in all — rose from their seats and gathered on all sides of four tables.

Believers greeted fellow Christians with handshakes and hugs — and gazed into each other’s eyes as they ate of the bread and drank of the cup.

“We’re about to have a meal together,” the communion leader explained. “Granted, the portions may seem rather small, but the meaning is hugely significant.”

The outside of the Arlington Church of Christ building, just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital.

‘Joyous communal meal’

In the 2008 book “Come to the Table: Revisioning the Lord’s Supper,” Restoration Movement scholar John Mark Hicks asserted that the “Christian practice of the Lord’s Supper as a silent, solemn, individualistic eating of bread and drinking of wine is radically dissimilar from the joyous communal meal in earliest Christianity.”

“I do affirm Word and Table as important and essential,” Hicks said in a Facebook message. “The Word as gospel proclamation explains the Table, and the Table is the experience of the gospel. The Table, in my view, is the climactic point of the assembly where we commune with God and each other. So, the sermon leads to the table, and the table is concrete visible communion with God and each other.”

Hicks’ perspective resonates with Cavitt, 38, a native Texan who earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Abilene Christian University.

“I arrange my sermons to always feed directly into communion,” the minister said. 

Daniel E. Holland, right, smiles as he stands beside church member Donnis Crump during the Lord’s Supper.

‘Why don’t we come around the table?’

The Arlington church hosts separate English and Spanish assemblies that once drew a combined crowd of about 250.

But after months of online worship during the pandemic, in-person attendance failed to return to normal. Some long-distance commuters found online services more convenient than driving to the building.

For those who did reconvene, social distancing and prepackaged individual communion cups were the new normal. 

But after a while, “the elders decided that it was time to not be so afraid anymore,” said Lou Hoffman, 75, a longtime member.

Hoffman had an idea that she discussed with a former elder, Scott Brunner, before he moved to Alabama.

“Why don’t we come around the table rather than passing the trays?” she recalled asking. 

Brunner replied that he had a similar thought.

Church member Lou Hoffman prepares the communion emblems for the Arlington Church of Christ.

‘A much more intimate thing’

At first the church tried a row of tables up front, but that became a bit unwieldy. 

Then Cavitt suggested taking out the pews in the center of the auditorium — no longer needed with fewer in attendance — and the other leaders agreed.

The updated technique breaks up the routine of congregants sitting in worship and staring at the speaker or hymn lyrics on the screen, said elder Lance Baxter, an Air Force Academy graduate who has served in active duty and as a Pentagon civilian employee.

Elder Lance Baxter leads singing at the Arlington Church of Christ.

“As shepherds, we identified connection as one of the challenges our congregation faces,” Baxter said. “In Scripture, they gathered, and they broke bread, and it was a much more intimate thing, right?”

Hoffman, a retired federal government attorney, said she believes the new configuration has successfully brought the congregation closer together.

“It’s one of the most important parts of our gathering together,” she said of the Lord’s Supper. “In the Bible, that’s the reason they were getting together … and then they took advantage of that (time) to preach and sing and do the other things.”

Cavitt put it this way: “The idea was that communion should be a moment of communing, and if we’re all staring at our feet quietly, that doesn’t really work.”

The Arlington church’s new approach, he believes, better resembles what God intended.

“The idea was that communion should be a moment of communing, and if we’re all staring at our feet quietly, that doesn’t really work.”

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

Insurance magnate Andrew Mizell “A.M.” Burton — a benefactor of Lipscomb University — built the Central church in the city’s heart in 1925. For nearly a century, the church used its location to meet the needs of people downtown.

But in recent years, a sweeping slate of changes has engulfed the church: Central became a nonprofit corporation and renamed itself the Nashville Church of Christ. It launched a renovation but then ceased meeting in its historic space in 2018. Now, worship occurs on Zoom. Longtime church members have left.

The Central Church of Christ’s education building is shown in 1928. The congregation replaced the stone facade with bricks in the 1980s, giving the downtown structure its current look.

Former members interviewed by The Christian Chronicle attribute the changes — which have left them distraught and skeptical about motives — to Shawn Mathis, who became the Central church’s third elder in 2017.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on a “yearslong legal dispute” between the church and Burton’s heirs, including singer-songwriter Amy Grant. The six-time Grammy Award winner, known for her pop and contemporary Christian hits, is the great-granddaughter of A.M. Burton.

The Chronicle requested interviews with Mathis and additional Nashville Church of Christ ministers but received no reply.

An attorney representing the church, C. Troy Clark, declined to respond to specific questions, instead referring the newspaper to public documents. Clark is a deacon of the Central Church of Christ in Augusta, Ga.

Clark said he and his clients are “trying the best that we can to follow what we believe to be our legal and ethical obligations … as it relates to … what we would call extrajudicial statements about the pending litigation.”

Lost connections

Howell Townes grew up at Central and served the congregation for 30 years as treasurer. His parents married there in 1933.

Townes recalled that Mathis and his wife began attending sometime in 2017. That September, the treasurer was planning to get a haircut when an email from the preacher summoned him to a meeting with Mathis. There, Townes said that Mathis told the leadership they must incorporate as a nonprofit to comply with IRS requirements and save the church from lawsuits.

The treasurer didn’t buy it.

Tall buildings in the crowded core of downtown Nashville, Tenn., flank the Nashville Church of Christ, formerly the Central Church of Christ.

“Due to Central deciding to become a 501(c)(3) organization (which I feel is not required of a church and therefore unnecessary), I plan to resign as both the Treasurer and a Deacon at Central,” Townes told a Central elder in an October 2017 email.

“I never set foot in that building again,” Townes told the Chronicle.

Townes and his wife, Janet, said they feel sad and angry as they think about “all the connections” they’ve lost. 

“My grandparents went there. … I met Janet there,” said Townes, now a member of a different Nashville congregation, the Lindsley Avenue Church of Christ. “We were doing some good in God’s name in the center of downtown Nashville. And we’re not doing that now.”

“We were doing some good in God’s name in the center of downtown Nashville. And we’re not doing that now.”

Former member Ken Tucker and his wife, Martha, began attending Central around 2011. The Tuckers liked Central’s size and opportunities for service.

“We felt confident in a small congregation where we could actually be used,” he said.

Central welcomed the couple. Tucker taught Sunday school and occasionally preached and led singing. Eventually the congregation invited him to serve as an elder, an invitation he declined because of his wife’s poor health.

Martha, now deceased, left the congregation when Mathis became an elder.

Tucker thought that Mathis’ installation was “strange.” Still, he stayed with the congregation a little longer to finish a teaching commitment. But he eventually left, too.

Howell Townes, treasurer of the Central Church of Christ in Nashville, Tenn., for three decades, now attends the nearby Lindsley Avenue Church of Christ with his wife, Janet.

Tucker pointed to what he described as excessive praise heaped on the new leader by outside speaker Larry Mathis, Shawn’s father. Echoing other members, Tucker labeled the installation a “coronation.”

A former preacher in Woodbury, Tenn., about 55 miles southeast of Nashville, Larry Mathis is now listed as an elder and education minister on the Nashville Church of Christ website.

Tucker likewise recalled Shawn Mathis’ urgent desire for Central to incorporate. 

“He was insistent, right from the beginning to … make it a nonprofit organization, although it was already a nonprofit organization,” Tucker said.

Embroiled in litigation

As noted by the Wall Street Journal, the Nashville Church of Christ faces problems beyond disaffected former members.

In 2020, the church sued Burton’s heirs over rights to the building after family members began investigating changes there. The church states in legal documents that it began meeting in other locations in December 2018 because of “full-scale renovations.” The church worshiped primarily online during the pandemic, according to those documents.

Among the 26 defendants named in the suit, besides Grant, were the singer’s second-cousin, Andy Burton, son of A.M. Burton II, a minister to Nashville’s Hillsboro Church of Christ for more than 30 years. A.M. Burton II recently died.

A key issue for Grant is keeping alive the story of her great-grandfather, his values and the Central Church of Christ. 

Andrew Mizell “A.M.”Burton’s heirs include his great-granddaughter Amy Grant, the six-time Grammy Award winner famous for her pop and contemporary Christian music.

“This is part of all of our history, the impact that one human can have in such a short time, especially when working together in the context of … a faith community,” Grant told the Chronicle. 

“The work of that church was instrumental in changing the face of downtown Nashville,” she added. 

What her great-grandfather did in 1925 can inspire leaders in 2025, she believes.

Grant grew up in Churches of Christ, attending Nashville’s Hillsboro and West End congregations. While her career makes it difficult to place “formal membership” in one church, she said, the singer feels a “deep connection” to Churches of Christ, shaped profoundly by the a cappella hymns she sang as a child and teenager.

Deeds and taxes

Key to the Nashville Church of Christ controversy is the deed to the disputed church property. 

Divisive doctrinal issues of the time color the language, which requires church trustees to reject “instrumental music in their worship” and “disapprove of all human organized societies.”

More crucially, the deed reserves the property for “the use and benefit of the Church of Christ,” a condition that, if violated, mandates that the property revert to the estate of A.M. Burton. If no congregation meets in the building, the Burton family argues that the church is no longer honoring their forebear’s intentions.

A.M. Burton is seen in a birthday scrapbook owned by his great-grandson Andy Burton.

According to the office of the Metropolitan Trustee, Nashville Church of Christ Inc. owes $96,079.77 in property taxes and interest for 2024. The government began assessing taxes on the property in 2020, yielding a total tax bill of more than $400,000.

The state found that “the property is not used in furtherance of exempt purposes” according to a 2021 document obtained by the Chronicle. “Any current use of the property is sporadic at best,” the state maintains, adding that incomplete renovations and risks from toxic substances “would seemingly preclude regular use.”

Besides the land where the church building stands, the Nashville Church of Christ owns two pieces of property used as parking lots.

“When we left … the church was getting over $40,000 a month automatically from the parking lot rent,” Townes said. “That’s what kept Central alive financially … because our numbers had decreased as people went to suburban congregations.”

The office of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti — a member of the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood, south of Nashville — has investigated the Nashville Church of Christ over questions related to its use of missionary funds.

Documents from the attorney general’s office detail six-figure salaries for some of the Nashville Church of Christ’s ministers, supplemented by housing and health insurance allowances.

A request to preaching minister Spencer Davidson for a Zoom link to join online worship went unanswered. When the Chronicle used a link provided by a previous attendee, the host refused to let the reporter participate.

About 45 minutes later, the reporter found the church building’s front doors locked, with garbage clogging a stairwell and excrement dotting a narrow passageway separating the building from a neighboring structure.

Trash collects in a stairwell near the locked front entrance of the Nashville Church of Christ.

‘The Central Church of Christ died’

Mathis spoke about his work at the Nashville Church of Christ in a “Friends of the Restoration” lecture at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala., in 2019.

The Nashville leader characterized the congregation as a “case study” of the dysfunction in leadership that can drive people from ministry and churches out of existence.

Mathis stressed that elders are not only responsible for members’ personal spiritual needs but for congregational financial management.

“The elders are the governors of the Lord’s church today. You heard the word, ‘the governors,’” Mathis said, emphasizing elders’ roles as congregational administrators.

“The elders are the governors of the Lord’s church today. You heard the word, ‘the governors.’”

Mathis critiqued aspects of Central’s leadership. While the first generation of Central leaders — men such as A.M. Burton — had provided clear  direction, the congregation had failed to conduct succession planning, he said. As early leaders died, the church began to falter.

He offered what he warned were strong words about the church’s recent history.

“The former elders’ wives took over the congregation, and the elders were figureheads for 25 years,” Mathis claimed. “That’s a serious problem.” 

He later added, “The church became a social club for the elderly.”

The disputed building of Nashville Church of Christ sits nestled among downtown structures.

Mathis praised the previous leadership’s money management, observing that the elders had “kept the money well,” including the funds generated by the parking lots.

“There’s a lot of money to be dealt with, a lot of money to do the Lord’s work,” he said.

In the 2019 presentation, the Nashville Church of Christ elder recited a litany of problems he found at the Central building, including “poor electrical wiring” along with “a stench from broken plumbing systems, black mold under carpet (and) two squatters living in the building.” He spoke of “vagrants” who bullied elderly church members and stretched out on pews during Bible class.

Once renovations began, “it was dangerous to have people in the building,” Mathis contended.

“I believe the Central Church of Christ died,” he said. “We’re relaunching the church there.”

“I believe the Central Church of Christ died. We’re relaunching the church there.”

On its website, the Nashville Church of Christ underscores its desire for a global impact.

“We believe that we, the Church — the called-out body of Christ — exist beyond the walls of a building or geographical boundaries,” the site reads. 

“Our online church services allow us to connect outside our immediate communities, sharing the gospel far and wide.”

The website provides a link to the Harbinger Institute, which urges visitors to inquire about “six week seminars” and “special programs.” The online theological school has ties to the church.

‘I just don’t want it to die’

While the Nashville Church of Christ touts its online ministry “outside” the local community, students of the downtown congregation’s history praise the inside-the-city outreach it pioneered a century ago.

The original Central church sprang from efforts to establish a thriving Church of Christ squarely in Nashville’s urban core, explained Mac Ice, librarian and researcher at Abilene Christian University in Texas.

Between 1997 and 2008, Ice served the congregation first as youth minister, then as associate minister.

The Central congregation packs the auditorium in a 1946 photo likely taken after Sunday worship, according to researcher Mac Ice.

Toward the end of the 19th century, area church leaders had adopted a strategy for planting churches called “swarming,” Ice said, expanding outwardly from downtown to start congregations in different parts of Nashville.

“They planted churches in each quadrant of the city … very near the streetcar lines by intent,” Ice said. “They (were) taking advantage of the suburban growth of the town.”

The focus on the periphery left the city’s heart spiritually forlorn. A.M. Burton stepped into the vacuum. The church he helped finance filled the void with a Gospel not only proclaimed but embodied, historical accounts reveal. 

In a 1999 study, minister and educator Harold Shank outlined the urban congregation’s boots-on-the-ground approach.

Central offered free dental and medical services, Shank wrote. It built a safe playground for kids otherwise left to the streets. A day care program assisted children of working mothers. The church served a free lunch for the unhoused and poor, providing 45,000 hot meals between 1925 and 1928. It acquired housing for young men and women.

May Ola England, 83, now a member of the Mt. Juliet Church of Christ near Nashville, benefited from Central’s visionary programs. In the early 1960s, she lived in the congregation’s girls’ home, a residence across the street from the Central building that provided affordable housing for young women new to the city.

Central Church of Christ members pose on the property around 1926. Appearing in the photo is A.M. Burton, who was instrumental in starting the congregation.

England was a recent graduate of what is now Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn. After growing up in a small Oklahoma town, she had found work in Nashville.

England attended Central, where she was especially fond of minister Thomas Whitfield. “I loved him as a Sunday school teacher,” she said. “He was … so good to all of us.”

A.M. Burton’s descendant Andy Burton saw the congregation’s focus on people’s physical as well as spiritual needs as a reflection of his great-grandfather’s deep faith in Jesus’ teachings.

Andy Burton, great-grandson of Central Church of Christ benefactor A.M. Burton, displays a scrapbook open to his great-grandad’s photo.

The Burton descendant pointed to a 1927 story in The Tennessean where his great-grandfather went straight to Matthew 25 to answer a reporter’s question about starting Central: “For I was hungry, and you gave me meat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.”

“He was way ahead of his time. … His whole view of a church was,” the younger Burton said.

“There are stories about the church being open at night for the homeless when it got cold,” he added, “and that homeless men would be asleep on the pews in the middle of the night.”

“There are stories about the church being open at night for the homeless when it got cold, and that homeless men would be asleep on the pews in the middle of the night.”

Andy Burton hopes that the building his great-grandfather constructed can keep serving as a beacon, “a center for something like what Granddad was trying to do.”

“I just don’t want it to die,” Burton said of the legacy of his great-grandfather, who wanted “the church to really have a living testimony to the community.”

TED PARKS is a Nashville-based correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact letters@christianchronicle.org.

Why? Wall’s son fought for the Union, and Forrest, a ruthless Confederate raider, didn’t like it.

A Bible at the Roan’s Creek Church of Christ is dated 1829.

Roan’s Creek Church of Christ, the congregation about 100 miles west of Nashville that Gooch serves, recently celebrated its 200-year anniversary. Gooch is proud of his forebears buried in the cemetery across the road from the building, the deacon’s deep roots anchored in the church’s rich soil of family ties and abiding faithfulness.

“It’s not every day you hear of a church … being around for 200 years,” Gooch said. “We’re still there, teaching the same thing that was taught 200 years ago.”

“It’s not every day you hear of a church … being around for 200 years. We’re still there, teaching the same thing that was taught 200 years ago.”

About 175 current and former members and guests gathered for the anniversary celebration, which featured guest speakers for Sunday morning class and worship and a catered dinner on the grounds. The Sunday-evening service kicked off a four-day gospel meeting.

Roan’s Creek minister Mark Simons explained that the 60-member church traditionally holds a gospel meeting in March or April and celebrates homecoming the first Sunday in May. How to celebrate two centuries of history had been on the congregation’s mind for several years.

Mark Simons, now in his 22nd year as Roan’s Creek minister, holds granddaughter Camille Simons, one of the many guests at the congregation’s special celebration.

The church decided to “combine the homecoming with the gospel meeting and have some guys who have been connected with Roan’s Creek to do it,” Simons said.

Opening speaker Michael Young, Roan’s Creek youth minister two decades back, set the stage by recreating the times in which the Carroll County church was born.

“America was still new” when Christians started meeting where Roan’s Creek church now worships, Young said. Tennessee was on the nation’s frontier. Up north, the Erie Canal, vital for commerce in the new republic, opened in 1825.

Coonskin-capped Davy Crockett was elected to state office in 1821 and made his debut in the U.S. Congress in 1827. Roan’s Creek had been around at least a decade when Crockett went to Texas in 1835 and soon died defending the Alamo.

About 175 people crowded into the Roan’s Creek building to celebrate communion, continuing the tradition of generations of worshipers at the West Tennessee congregation.

Nick Jones, Roan’s Creek youth minister around 2000, spoke after Young.

“You think about what 200 years means in this place,” Jones said, “the thousands of worship services that have been held right here on this ground … the countless baptisms, the countless marriages, the countless relationships. … The story of Roan’s Creek did not start with us, and it does not end with us.

“We’re not part of a story that’s 200 years old, we’re part of a story that’s thousands of years old,” Jones said. “We’re part of a story that God continues.”

“We’re not part of a story that’s 200 years old, we’re part of a story that’s thousands of years old. We’re part of a story that God continues.”

Located atop a gentle hill surrounded by tall trees, the church marks 1825 as its official beginning, the year it secured the deed to its current property. But congregational histories suggest that Christians began meeting there earlier, around 1820.

The congregation connects its beginnings with John Mulkey, a Kentucky Baptist preacher influenced by Presbyterian reformer Barton W. Stone. Roan Creek’s founders attended Mulkey’s congregation before moving to Carroll County.

Abandoning his denominational affiliations in the interest of Christian unity, Stone joined forces in the 1830s with Alexander Campbell, forming what would become the Stone-Campbell Movement, also called the Restoration Movement.

As was common among Stone-related congregations, Roan’s Creek was originally a “Christian” church.

A quilt honors past Roan’s Creek church members and other people associated with the congregation.

Roan’s Creek member Karen Webb Coffman, who traces her genealogy all the way to the congregation’s founders, remembered stories about people traveling in wagons to camp on the Carroll County hilltop for week-long evangelistic meetings.

The lineup of preachers who served the congregation regularly or spoke on special occasions includes key church leaders during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Among them were David Lipscomb, A.G. Freed and N.B. Hardeman, preachers who would lend their names to universities associated with Churches of Christ.

Current Roan’s Creek members recalled growing up in the congregation.

Natelle Waugh, now in her 80s, remembered when former Freed-Hardeman dean C.P. Roland would preach once a month. One Sunday, Roland suddenly interrupted his sermon.

Former Roan’s Creek youth minister Michael Young speaks at the church’s 200th anniversary service.

“That woman and that little girl fell down out the door,” the preacher said. The woman was Waugh’s mother, who had gotten up to take Waugh’s daughter to the bathroom outside.

No one was hurt. Roland “just kept right on preaching,” Waugh chuckled.

Waugh’s high school classmate and fellow octogenarian Martha Belew Webb also attended Roan’s Creek. Webb’s father, Lewis Belew, served as elder and led singing.

Webb remembered attending “all the churches’ revivals around. … We went nearly every night all summer.” When she was 8 years old, Webb and 12 others left for a church meeting in a farm wagon. She was one of three passengers dangling their legs over the back when a car collided with the horse-drawn vehicle.

Despite injuries, everyone “survived,” Waugh recalled about her friend’s accident. Climbing into a wagon to trot to a gospel meeting reminded Waugh of “some of the hardships” involved in getting to church before everyone had a car.

A historical marker describes the founding of the Roan’s Creek Church of Christ.

Brenda Taylor, who likewise grew up at Roan’s Creek, remembered the concrete-block church building that had replaced a wooden structure. The congregation later covered the block structure with brick.

Taylor’s dad helped build two outdoor toilets. Each “had a good shed over it, didn’t get wet in there,” Taylor said, adding that “you had to watch for the chicken snakes.” Coops and outhouses were easy to confuse, at least for snakes.

The building’s interior — cooled by fans — also attracted unwanted guests. “The wasps and bumblebees would get in there. … They just loved the inside of that cool building,” Taylor said. With two churchwomen known to dip snuff, there was always “medicine” for a sting.

Youth minister Jones said that the congregation’s original frame building was much larger, rumored to seat 800 people.

Roan’s Creek church members, past and present, pose for a group photo at the 200th anniversary celebration.

Eventually the church built a smaller structure. Histories of Roan’s Creek underscore its role as a West Tennessee “mother church,” serving as a springboard to the establishment of multiple congregations in the area.

Coffman also remembered the block building bricked in the 1960s and expanded with classrooms in the 1970s and a fellowship hall in the 1980s.

Thomas Derryberry, now in his 90s, preached for Roan’s Creek part time in the 1960s and 1970s, eventually replaced by full-time preacher Charles Thomason.

“It was a faithful congregation, and it was strong, with good leaders,” Derryberry remembered. “It was just … good times.

Roan’s Creek members and visitors sing at the church’s 200th anniversary service.

“For 200 years the congregation has been united … with peace” despite the multiple wars it has endured, Derryberry said.

“There are 409 times the Bible mentions the word ‘peace,’” the preacher explained. “Unity is the foundation of peace.”

His father a preacher, Roan’s Creek’s Simons moved frequently growing up. Simons has served the congregation almost 23 years, but Roan’s Creek has been his first and only full-time pulpit job. “The challenge is making connections,” Simons said about rural congregations like his. “You’re dealing with generational families.”

A gravestone marks the burial place of William Wall, whose barn, descendants say, was burned down by Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Simons observed that Christ’s church itself is rooted in history. “It’s based upon a book that’s 2,000 years old,” he said, explaining that in the 19th century “people had changed the teaching of that book, and then had struggled to get the truth back.”

Seeing the effort of individuals and families at Roan’s Creek to stay faithful to that truth will encourage others to preserve the “good path,” Simons hopes. “It has a very … meaningful past.”

“You walk the cemetery out here, almost every single person is kin to us one way or another, by marriage or by blood.”

“This is a refreshing change to see a congregation last this long,” said William Taylor Wall, descendant of the Walls who roused the ire of Confederate raider Forrest so long ago. Wall was visiting the Roan’s Creek celebration from his home in West Virginia.

“You walk the cemetery out here, almost every single person is kin to us one way or another, by marriage or by blood,” Wall said.

Wall praised the church’s dedication to the truth of the Bible. While some congregations might chase “the newest thing,” Walls said, “that’s not what’s going to keep them for the next 200 years.”

TED PARKS is a Nashville-based correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact letters@christianchronicle.org.

For 13 years, the Arkansas native had served as a missionary in the Czech Republic, once part of the communist bloc nation of Czechoslovakia.

While most of the landlocked Central European country’s neighbors have strong Catholic or Orthodox ties, nearly three-fourths of Czechs do not identify with any religious group, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 29 percent say they believe in God at all.

Anderson was part of a seven-person church- planting team that formed at the University of Arkansas and committed to five years abroad. He had stayed nearly a decade past that, even as the last of his teammates returned to the U.S. two years earlier. A few other families had visited, potentially to take over the work, but none had stayed long-term.

The Church of Christ that the team formed had about a dozen worshipers left. By 2019, the burden of guiding a young church through the influences of its highly secular society had become painful, said Anderson’s wife, Monika.

Mitch and Monika Anderson

“I was like, ‘I’m done,’” Monika said. While not ready to leave Olomouc, she said, “I was close. But Mitch is very faithful.”

Mitch met and married Monika, a native of neighboring Slovakia, during his time in Olomouc. They had two children and a house. They loved the community.

“The idea was to go into it open to whatever God may show us, whether it was to keep doing what we’re doing and just make some changes, or whether it was time to go to another place or go another direction.”

They took a sabbatical, focusing on reflection, planning and lots of prayer.

“The idea was to go into it open to whatever God may show us,” Mitch said, “whether it was to keep doing what we’re doing and just make some changes, or whether it was time to go to another place or go another direction.”

Much-needed Barnabas moments

Gary and Frances Green served as their sabbatical coaches. The former veterinarian and his wife planted churches in Venezuela for eight years before moving to Texas. There, Gary established the WorldWide Witness program at Abilene Christian University and prepared more than 700 students for cross-cultural work. Now based in Colorado, the Greens specialize in missionary care. They work with Barnabas International, a nonprofit that takes its name from the first-century Christian who was called “Son of Encouragement.”

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which put extra stress on the Andersons and their young children, the couple received encouragement from the Greens via online sessions. They also participated in a “debrief,” Mitch said, “to lay our story out, share all the struggles and all the difficulties.”

Gary and Frances Green

When the couple first reached out to the Greens, “they were running on empty — emotionally and spiritually,” Gary Green said. “Unfortunately, this is far too common among global workers.”

In non-pandemic times, the Greens use their home in Colorado to host debriefings. The Andersons worked with another debriefer who housed guests at a facility on the island of Cyprus — the birthplace of Barnabas himself. The setting contributed to the sense of restoration, the couple said.

Later in their sabbatical, the Andersons spent time with Monika’s parents in Slovakia. One evening, as they walked with their son, Sam, in a stroller in hopes that he’d fall asleep, they began “dreaming and talking,” Mitch said.

Monika said, “We have a house that we love. I love to host. Mitch, you like to listen.”

“It would allow us to be here, to use what we have already and to still be connected with the people here, even if we didn’t feel like we would keep leading them, keep having that on our shoulders.”

Why not start a ministry to serve other burned-out international workers the same way they’d been served?

“It would allow us to be here, to use what we have already,” Mitch said, “and to still be connected with the people here, even if we didn’t feel like we would keep leading them, keep having that on our shoulders.”

Building an oasis

The burnout began to fade, replaced by new energy.

As the pandemic dragged on, the Andersons remodeled an apartment adjoining their home into guest quarters. They dubbed it “Garden Refuge: A Place of Rest and Renewal for Global Workers.” Mitch earned certifications in mission care and counseling and trained in assessment, coaching and leadership.

Olomouc’s Caesar Fountain depicts the Roman emperor astride his horse above river gods Morava and Danubia.

The end result: Caretakers, a ministry that offers debriefing, transition support, stress assessment and spiritual formation retreats. Monika, who has degrees in physical education and social work, offers fitness and nutrition training for their clients.

Their home, Olomouc (pronounced “Oh-loh-moats”), is a city of about 102,000 in the Czech Republic’s eastern Moravian region. Highly walkable, the historic Old Town brims with arches, architecture and art, including a town hall with an astronomical clock. At noon, a parade of characters — miners, bakers, auto workers and even a volleyball player — parade across the clock for seven minutes as a rooster announces the time.

Nearby stands the Holy Trinity Column, an 18th century Moravian baroque creation of Václav Render, encrusted with ornate sculptures meant to celebrate the church and faith.

Since the summer of 2022, international workers have traveled from across Europe, Asia and the Middle East to Olomouc to stay at the Garden Refuge. In the months before launching the Caretakers ministry, the couple housed refugees from Ukraine in the apartment.

The backyard garden at the Andersons’ Garden Refuge brims with lavender, mint, mother’s breath, black currant, raspberries, blackberries, cloves and strawberries. Tomatoes grow in an area behind the swing set.

“Garden Refuge” is more than a name. In their backyard the Andersons have planted an expansive garden with tomatoes, basil, lavender, carrots and berries from blue to goose. There’s also a playground. The couple encourages their guests to spend time gardening — a restorative act.

It’s also an apt analogy for the Caretakers ministry, said Joshua Beall, a member of the Robinson & Center Church of Christ in Conway, Ark.

At a breakfast gathering, Sam Anderson points to tomatoes grown in his family’s garden.

“Anyone involved in full-time ministry for a lengthy period of time knows how easy it is to overlook your own needs and the needs of those in your home in order to try to meet the needs of others in your ministry,” said Beall, who served with his wife, Sarah, on the Olomouc team from 2006 to 2017. “You have to feed and water yourself sometimes so that you might be able to feed and water others.

“What Mitch and Monika are doing is inviting people to an oasis, providing them a refreshing drink and showing them how to stay near the water source while making trips away to serve others.”

‘We got our joy back’

Albert “Bubba” Cook, a longtime missionary in Romania, began a three-month sabbatical with coaching and debriefing by the Caretakers ministry.

At Garden Refuge, “I felt the Lord saying with grace, over and over, ‘I see you,’” Cook said in his review of the ministry. “Mitch and Monika provided authentic and meaningful guidance pointing me to Christ again. …

“Your care and guidance are the sweet smell of God’s grace in the plum blossoms in Hejcin Meadows,” he told the couple, referring to a walking path near the apartment.

Albert and Lavinia Cook

The Andersons are renovating another part of their home, formerly a rental unit, to accommodate more guests and provide rooms for debriefings and exercise. Last fall, Cook and his wife, Lavinia, took part in the Caretakers ministry’s seven-week fitness and nutrition challenge.

The Andersons host occasional gatherings for the Christians they’ve served during their time in the Czech Republic. The fellowship is sweet, and the burdens seem lighter, the couple said.

Reflecting on the Andersons’ sabbatical, Gary Green said, “It was a joy to walk with them until they once again heard a sense of call from the Father. Now, instead of serving from emptiness, they graciously overflow with life to others.”

Or, as Monika put it, “We got our joy back. It helped us so much.”

Garden Refuge includes a common area for reading, reflection and prayer.

She prays that, through Caretakers, they can help other missionaries stay committed to planting and cultivating their small gardens — even for just a bit longer — when they’re ready to say “I’m done.”

“Or,” her husband added, “to help them not get to that point in the first place.”

Website: caretakers.cz

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

Five days later, he texted the factory again: Put the labels back on.

Mana Nutrition, a ministry supported by Churches of Christ and used in global relief efforts, is among a host of nonprofits worldwide that receive grants from USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.

An employee gathers boxes that will hold packets of MANA (A child in Uganda tries a packet of MANA (Mother-Administered Nutritive Aid) at Mana Nutrition’s plant in Fitzgerald, Ga.

In late January, the Trump administration began cutting most of the agency’s staff and canceling its contracts under the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

That included USAID’s contract with Mana, which produces a high-calorie, vitamin-fortified peanut butter for children suffering from severe malnutrition. Since 2010, Mana has provided aid to 8 million children in 45 countries, according to the nonprofit’s website.

A packet of MANA (seen here in Uganda) bears the logo of USAID.

“It’s been a yo-yo week,” Moore, Mana’s chief executive officer, said during a Tuesday night phone call with The Christian Chronicle. He and his coworker, Jon McDowell, were returning to their homes in Charlotte, N.C., from Fitzgerald, Ga., where Mana Nutrition’s plant stands across the street from a peanut farm. The nonprofit buys 1.3 million pounds of peanuts per month, McDowell said, and USAID contracts represent about 90 percent of its business. 

Mana hasn’t received a payment from the agency since December, Moore said. When notified that their contract was terminated, the nonprofit had about 400,000 boxes of MANA (Mother-Administered Nutritive Aid) packets in its warehouse with labels that read, “USAID. From the American people.” 

Although that contract is now restored, McDowell said, “the product is still in our warehouse.”

A painting welcomes visitors to downtown Fitzgerald, Ga., home of Mana Nutrition.

‘Termination for Convenience’

DOGE’s mission aligns with an executive order signed on Jan. 20, the first day of Donald Trump’s second term, titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.” 

“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” the order reads. “They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”

“The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values” reads an executive order signed Jan. 20, 2025.

Moore, a 1990 graduate of Harding University, spent 10 years on a mission team in Uganda. He is a co-founder of Kibo Group International, a faith-based organization that sponsors sustainable development projects in Africa. He spent time in Washington as a legislative fellow and Africa specialist before co-founding Mana with David Todd Harmon, an Abilene Christian University alum, and fellow Harding alums Bret Raymond and Brett Biggs. The nonprofit shares its name with the life-sustaining bread, often spelled “manna,” that God provided to the Israelites during the Exodus.

Mark Moore speaks with guests in Fitzgerald, Ga., during a 2024 visit from USAID administrator Samantha Power, who was placed on leave in early 2025.

The peanut butter is a Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food, or RUTF, that doesn’t require refrigeration or hospitalization to treat severe malnourishment in children. In 2010, one box of MANA packets cost $57 to produce, Moore said. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $80. Through competitive bidding, the nonprofit now spends about $40 per box. 

McDowell, a 2013 Harding graduate, had just begun working full time for Mana when the nonprofit received a Jan. 29 email from an address they didn’t recognize at USAID. 

Stop production of MANA, the email read. They reached out to their USAID contacts, only to learn that most had been let go or put on furlough.

A child in Nicaragua digs into a packet of MANA.

In early February, as Mana’s staff pondered what to do, Trump appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as acting director for USAID. Rubio said that the agency’s work with life-saving assistance programs would continue. Mana soon received a second email asking them to resume work.

Then came the Feb. 26 notice of “Termination for Convenience of the Government” (so named to distinguish it from contract termination due to fraud or criminal conduct). That’s when Moore told the factory to stop placing USAID labels on MANA packets. 

In the media spotlight

Mana’s plight quickly went viral, prompting CNN, The New Republic and other media outlets to give the nonprofit “our 15 minutes of fame,” Moore said. 

The attention attracted supporters and naysayers alike.

“The outpouring of support by my friends here and elsewhere has been humbling and inspiring,” Moore said in a March 2 social media post. 

Others posted messages that read, “Mana is getting rich off my tax dollars!” “Let other people feed themselves!” and “Mark is a crook!” 

“As a devout Christian myself,” Moore wrote, “I must reluctantly note that many or even most of these come from my fellow Jesus people.”

Mana is owed nearly $20 million in reimbursements from the federal government — a number that has fueled some of the criticism, Moore acknowledged.

Mana Nutrition’s warehouse in Fitzgerald, Ga.

“I know big numbers like that sound impressive,” he said, “but there is no profit built into that. We take the money when we’re paid and recycle it back into making more RUTF for hungry kids.”

 Of DOGE’s mission, Moore said, “I think we can all agree that reform and change and frugality are needed to get our spending in order. If the USA were a household that made $50,000 per year, we are spending $70,000! That’s gotta change. … 

“Any wise household would put every expense under scrutiny. But they’d also realize in the midst of their freak-out that the $100 they gave to the church food pantry wasn’t the problem or the solution.”

“Any wise household would put every expense under scrutiny. But they’d also realize in the midst of their freak-out that the $100 they gave to the church food pantry wasn’t the problem or the solution.”

Musk steps in

Mana’s story also drew attention from Musk himself. 

A podcaster named Jon Favreau (no relation to the actor/director) posted a screenshot from CNN’s coverage of Mana to X, the social media platform owned by Musk. Favreau, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, later posted a link to a story from Macon, Ga., TV station WMAZ.

Dollar Store Jon Favreau is an imbecilic propagandist who lies to score cheap political points.

That said, we will investigate whether this is real or not and fix it if it is.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 2, 2025

In response, Musk posted, “Dollar Store Jon Favreau is an imbecilic propagandist who lies to score cheap political points. That said, we will investigate whether this is real or not and fix it if it is.”

On March 3, Moore learned that Mana’s USAID contracts were reinstated.

In Uganda, health workers weigh a child during a visit by workers with Mana Nutrition.

The long work days are far from over, Moore said. Although Mana produces the nutritional packets, “we don’t captain the ships that deliver it. We’re not in the villages handing it out.” By government rules, only transportation companies that also have USAID contracts can get the product to the people who need it. Several international shippers have told Mana, “We don’t yet have an order to come and get it.”

In many ways, “it’s been a terrible week,” Moore said, but also a week of “thorns and roses.” 

While he’s thankful that he and his coworkers can continue producing life-saving peanut butter, “the drama is still unfolding.”

Until it nearly killed him.

The Air Force veteran and longtime law enforcement officer spent 115 days in the hospital. At one point, his condition became so dire that a nurse stuck a phone to his ear so his adult children, Bryce and BreAnne, could tell their unconscious father goodbye.

As Tod’s prognosis improved, he had to rebuild his muscles and stamina just to attempt basic movements. Only then could he relearn how to walk, shower and feed himself.

But I’m jumping way ahead. Let’s start at the beginning and note one crucial detail up front: Tod is my brother-in-law.

“I wasn’t really concerned about it,” he said of the coronavirus, telling his personal story — his miraculous story, as our family sees it — for the first time at the pandemic’s five-year anniversary.

The U.S. government declared the “very contagious” virus — as President Donald Trump described it — a national emergency on March 13, 2020.

COVID-19 brought a widespread lockdown that closed schools, stores and sanctuaries. Millions around the world died as fierce debates erupted over masks, vaccines and the disease’s origins.

A year into the pandemic, my wife, Tamie, who battles autoimmune diseases, and I joyfully welcomed the arrival of vaccines developed by companies such as Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

A health care worker fills a syringe with the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer.

“The vaccines offer hope for ending the pandemic,” I wrote in March 2021. “They offer hope for a brighter tomorrow. They offer hope, in a very real sense, for my own family and friends.”

But not all our loved ones shared our COVID-19 anxiety.

“Everybody that we knew, all it would do to them — they’d test positive for it, but they’d just lose their smell and taste,” recalled Tod, Tamie’s older brother. “That’s why I was joking around and calling it a government hoax.”

Afraid of the vaccine

Tod, now 59, pegged 1993 as the last time he got a flu shot. The injection made him ill, he said, and he saw no need to repeat that unpleasant experience.

“I was afraid I’d get sick if I took it,” Tod, who has diabetes, said of a possible COVID-19 vaccination. “I didn’t think anything about it really.”

“That’s how we both felt,” agreed his wife, Tracie, who works with him at the Howard McLeod Correctional Center in Atoka, about 130 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.

Tod Dillard with his daughter BreAnne, wife Tracie and granddaughter Emry in a picture taken before his battle with COVID-19.

For the Dillards, the state-run prison has become sort of the family business: Bryce, 33, and BreAnne, 32, also work with their dad and stepmother at the McLeod facility, along with Bryce’s wife, Brittany.

BreAnne started her job at the correctional center in 2021 and lacked paid time off when she got sick in September that year. Tod helped administer COVID-19 tests at the prison and gave his daughter one. She tested positive.

The illness soon spread to Tod and Tracie.

“It felt like any other sinus infection,” he said.

But within a week, his condition worsened. So did Tracie’s.

Late on a Sunday night, breathing became so difficult for Tod that he asked Tracie to take him to the Atoka County Medical Center emergency room.

“Honey, I’m going to have to call an ambulance because I’m sick, too,” she replied. “I don’t feel comfortable driving you.”

“It felt like any other sinus infection.”

Not expected to live

That Monday — Sept. 13, 2021 — marked eight years since Tod and Tamie’s mother, Patricia Sue Dooley Dillard, died from a sudden heart attack.

Tamie planned to call Tod — as she always does on the anniversary — after her brother got home from work. Instead, her sister-in-law’s caller ID flashed on my wife’s iPhone.

Tracie explained that Tod was hospitalized with COVID-19 and would be flown by medical helicopter to an intensive care unit at Mercy Hospital in Joplin, Mo., about 225 miles from Atoka, because his condition was critical.

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After refusing a catheter, Tod had gotten up to use the restroom at the Atoka hospital without calling for help. He fell, and the resulting gash on his head required stitches. A CT scan delayed his departure to Joplin.

Tod arrived at Mercy in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. By Wednesday, Tracie’s oxygen level fell so low that she, too, required hospitalization in Atoka.

By late Thursday, Tod had deteriorated to the point that his doctors did not expect him to survive the weekend. They needed to know his end-of-life wishes, they said.

A nurse named Brenda noted Tod’s grim condition on his medical chart. Brenda wrote on Friday that she had talked to Tamie — whom Tracie had asked to serve as next of kin — and explained the “expected cascade of events to play out over the coming days.”

Brenda also indicated that she had queried Tamie concerning Tod’s preference on a possible do-not-resuscitate order if his heart or breathing were to stop.

“Sister stated that she had this discussion with him … when their mother passed and she knew he would not want aggressive measures to be taken especially in the event his way of life would be halted,” the nurse wrote.

Notes expressing love and encouragement hang above Tod Dillard’s bed at Mercy Hospital in Joplin, Mo.

Preparing for the worst

Tamie worked behind the scenes to make sure loved ones were available to support and comfort Tod’s immediate family if the worst happened.

She connected with Tracie’s parents, Bob and Pat (the same names as my wife’s own parents), who live in Pennsylvania; with Pete Wade, a close friend who lives next door to her father, Bob Dillard, in Eagletown, Okla.; and with Tonya Chandler, Bryce and BreAnne’s mother, in Boswell, Okla.

Tamie helped arrange a video call for late Friday afternoon so that Tod’s children could say goodbye to their father.

That call ended almost as quickly as it began.

Tod’s head was bruised and cut from the fall and swollen like a misshapen balloon from the oxygen being pumped into his body. Add to that his breathing tube and wires from his IV and pain medications, and he did not look anything like himself.

Seated at a counter at her mother’s home, BreAnne tumbled off her stool when she glimpsed her father’s ghastly image on the screen.

“Turn it off!” Bryce screamed as his sister became inconsolable.

Minutes later, an audio call was initiated.

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The siblings took turns speaking to their father — praying that he somehow could hear them.

“Even me having to tell him bye on the phone didn’t seem real,” BreAnne said. “In my heart, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.”

Friday night, my wife tried — without much success — to rest for a few hours.

“I just couldn’t sleep at all, thinking that any moment the phone’s going to ring, and it’s going to be his doctor telling me that he’s gone,” she recalled, reminding me of what I witnessed up close that weekend.

She thanked God for every hour that the phone didn’t ring, she’d later tell her brother.

Tod Dillard, right, enjoys a recent barbecue dinner with family, including brother-in-law Bobby, daughter BreAnne, sister Tamie, wife Tracie and granddaughter Emry.

Praying for her ‘super hero’

On Facebook that Saturday, BreAnne expressed faith that her “super hero” would make it: “God has his plan with him. I just don’t think he’s done with us. He has a lot to do and a lot of people to love! And I believe that. Please pray for our whole family.”

By Sunday — a week after the ambulance picked up Tod — the call Tamie feared still hadn’t come.

Hope crept in.

“Tod is working hard, he’s fighting hard, and it’s making all the difference right now,” Tamie wrote on Facebook. “His condition is still extremely critical, but no new infections, complications or backward progress has caused the scales to tip (the) balance in the wrong direction. The doctors are surprised in a good way and we’re pretty proud of Tod for showing off.”

Tod’s long road to recovery was just beginning — but he would win the fight.

After over a month in Joplin, he transferred in late October 2021 to Select Specialty Hospital in Tulsa, Okla. There, he learned to use his muscles again — processes as simple as flexing his fingers and making a fist.

Tracie stayed two and a half weeks in the Atoka hospital. Her overall recovery lasted a few months.

While recuperating at home, she begged a doctor for a portable oxygen tank so she could go to Tulsa and be with Tod after weeks apart. After securing one, she made the drive and slept in a nearby hospitality house. She spent her days in his room helping care for him.

BreAnne Dillard visits her father, Tod, during his stay at a Tulsa, Okla., hospital in 2021.

After nearly a month in Tulsa, Tod returned home to the Atoka hospital a week before Thanksgiving to focus on his rehabilitation.

Nurses who remembered him as a patient couldn’t hide their astonishment at seeing him alive.

“They weren’t just saying that,” Tod said. “I could tell they were genuinely surprised.”

‘Sat down and bawled’

A major milestone came in December when Tod took his first steps in months.

He sent Tamie a video of that.

“I just sat down and bawled,” she said. “I must have watched it 400 times.”

A month later — in January 2022 — he rolled through the hospital in a wheelchair, greeted by a long line of medical staff holding balloons and signs with messages such as “You did it Tod!! #beatcovid.”

“I told everybody I was going to walk out of here,” he quipped as he stood up, receiving cheers and hugs as he finally headed home.

For Tod’s family — this writer included — tears flow easily when reflecting on his COVID-19 experience.

“I’m grateful and happy that he made it through all that,” Bryce said. “I’m impressed by everything he did going through all that. It’s inspiring.”

Said BreAnne: “He’s a blessing. Sometimes it leaves me speechless, really, to go to his office and have chats like we used to.”

Even as the outlook for Tod brightened, doctors kept tamping down expectations.

He might not regain all his physical strength, the family was told. His mental capacity might be diminished. He might need to quit his job.

But in March 2022, Tod resumed his former role as the prison’s administrative programs officer.

“He’s just defied all of those expectations,” Tamie said. “He’s back on his original retirement date, and he and Tracie are hopefully going to be able to do all the things they planned — and take all the trips they want to do. It’s just another aspect of the miracle that’s happened.”

Tod Dillard in a recent picture with his son, Bryce.

A better life

For Tod and Tracie, life isn’t exactly back to normal.

It’s even better.

“I know I learned to appreciate him more,” Tracie said, “and things that I used to get uptight about just seem very insignificant. I hope he knows how much I love him.”

For the COVID-19 survivor and his wife, life isn’t exactly back to normal. It’s even better.

The feeling is, as they say, mutual.

Tod is a man of few words. He enjoys fishing and hunting. He dotes on his three young grandchildren.

One of my favorite memories of him goes all the way back to 1990 when Tamie and I got married — and the tuxedo rental store sent Tod pants that were 8 inches too short. He didn’t realize it until a few hours before the ceremony, and we have some treasured photos (in a box somewhere) of his “man-pris” while he awaited delivery of a pair that fit. We all still laugh about that.

Since his victory over COVID-19, Tod has experienced survivor’s guilt, not understanding how or why he lived while so many did not. But he believes God has a plan for him. He wants to make his life count — especially after the second chance he received.

My brother-in-law was raised in a family of faith but had drifted away from church. His brush with death inspired Tod and Tracie to rekindle their connection with fellow Christians.

“I’ve just been trying to lead the life that I should have been leading all the time,” said Tod, who attends the Farris Church of Christ, a rural congregation southeast of Atoka. “I’ve always thought I was a good person, but I’m more conscientious.”

Tod Dillard, second from left, with his wife Tracie, sister Tamie and brother-in-law Bobby at the Farris Church of Christ in southeastern Oklahoma.

Seeing Tod back at work and back at church is “absolutely amazing,” said Jill Griffin, a former nurse manager at the prison and a member of the Farris church.

“It’s a God thing,” she said after a recent Sunday assembly.

That’s exactly how Tracie sees it.

Recalling that fateful weekend when everyone thought Tod was going to die — and he didn’t — his wife can’t help but cite divine intervention:

“That was God’s hand reaching down from heaven, saying, ‘You’re not leaving yet. I don’t want you up here.’”

“That was God’s hand reaching down from heaven, saying, ‘You’re not leaving yet. I don’t want you up here.’”

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

There’s also a honky-tonk in the tale.

At an assisted-living home about 45 miles south of Nashville, more than 50 family members, friends and fellow Christians gathered around “Nannie” and “Gran” Huckaby — Ruby Irene, 97, and Joe Marshall Jr., 101 — as the couple celebrated 80 years of marriage.

“Nannie” and “Gran” Huckaby celebrate their 80th wedding anniversary in Columbia, Tenn.

Cupcakes with white icing stacked beneath a bride-and-groom cake topper adorned a table near the dining room where the couple and their guests sat. Photos on another table provided a visual stroll through Joe and Irene’s many years together.

The Huckabys worshiped with Columbia’s Graymere Church of Christ for more than 35 years, their attendance punctuated by brief periods at other congregations. Later, they tuned in to Graymere online before moving to the assisted-living facility, where Joe now goes down every Sunday to a service led by Columbia’s West 7th Street Church of Christ.

“I think when you both have the same faith … it makes a difference,” Irene said. Her husband underscored the importance of raising children in a Christian community, explaining that he and Irene made it a point to take their children to church.

Longtime Graymere minister John Vaughan remembered the Huckabys’ commitment to each other and the church. Vaughan preached at Graymere for 37 years, arriving in his late 20s when the congregation was only 11 years old. Vaughan met Joe and Irene in 1967.

“They were not showy,” Vaughan said. “They kind of led by their example. They just lived the Christian life.”

A sign outside an assisted-living facility in Columbia, Tenn., celebrates the Huckabys’ 80th anniversary.

Steven McAdams, Joe and Irene’s 13 year-old great-grandson, echoed Vaughan’s admiration. McAdams traveled to Columbia from Amarillo, Texas, to honor his great-grandparents on the eve of their 80th anniversary.

“It’s amazing. … It’s kind of rare,” McAdams said about their long marriage. He described their relationship as “very strong” but tempered with humor. “They bicker with each other a little bit, and they love to chat a lot.

“I feel lucky and blessed that I get to still see them to this day.”

Guys, gals and NuGrape

“No. 1, he was smart. And … good-looking,” Nannie said about Gran. “And what else? Dependable.”

That was eight decades back, and the attraction lasted. 

Joe and Irene Huckaby in a photo from the mid-1940s, shortly after they married. The photo was one of several on display at the celebration of their 80 years of matrimony.

Irene recalled becoming a Christian at age 14 at a “baptizing hole” near Columbia. Joe was baptized at the city’s Highland Church of Christ, responding to a message by Joe Sanders, a well-known preacher and David Lipscomb College Bible professor.

It’s the first half of the 1940s. After spending the morning in worship, “Sunday evening you’d get out and ride around … that’s all there was to do in a small town,” Joe said. 

He and his friends stopped at what he called a “honky-tonk,” an establishment into which girls rarely ventured. The guys would buy the girls outside a soft drink — a NuGrape, Irene specified — and take it to them.

Joe’s brother, Clifton, knew Irene’s sister Ann. One Sunday night, Joe and his friends stopped by Irene’s house, but she’d already left. When they saw her in a car outside the honky-tonk talking to Joe’s cousin, they asked her to join them. She declined, asking the cousin to take her home.

Irene had an agenda, hoping Joe would “get the message,” she said — the message that she “was interested,” explained Connie Bedwell, the youngest of the couple’s three children. Irene wanted to see Joe without the cousin or any other guys along for the ride.

Joe got the message, but before their relationship got off the ground, Irene left for Detroit with her brother for work. She wrote him a “Dear Joe” letter, Bedwell said.

The sojourn up north was short. The brother bought her a bus ticket back in less than a week. Before long, the future Nannie and Gran were engaged.

A cloud of tobacco-spitting witnesses

The journey to matrimony was bumpy — and about 60 miles long.

Raised on 100 acres, Joe had four brothers and four sisters, his family earning a living raising cattle, selling milk and growing tobacco. His mom depended heavily on him.

“You don’t know what you’re taking away from me,” Joe’s mother told Irene. 

“Well, I guess your loss is my gain,” Irene fired back.

“She got off to a bad start,” Joe quipped.

Irene and Joe Huckaby got dressed “Up!” for a recent Halloween, portraying Ellie and Carl Fredricksen from the bittersweet Disney/Pixar animated film.

The couple decided to tie the knot on Saturday, Dec. 23, 1944, in Columbia. When the big day came, they kept their plans quiet. 

“If she got him back, I wouldn’t get him again,” Irene said of her soon-to-be mother-in-law.

The plot threatened to unravel when they couldn’t get the blood test results for their marriage license. Plan B was to head south to a state that didn’t require blood tests. That meant a 60-mile drive south to Athens, Ala., or a 100-mile drive southwest to Iuka, Miss.

Joe borrowed his brother Clifton’s car, and the couple took off for Alabama.

They arrived in Athens mid-afternoon. Though no blood test was required, Joe had to get a quick physical.

The ceremony took place at the Limestone County courthouse, where several Athens citizens sat around a potbelly stove warming themselves and spitting tobacco.

“I kind of lied about her age,” Joe confessed. He said Irene was 18. She was 17 1/2, and he was 21.

The men around the stove happily served as witnesses. “Give ’em five dollars and they’d sign for anything,” Irene recalled. 

The couple drove back to Columbia, stopped for groceries at the A&P and went home for the first night of their 80 years together.

Working well together … unless it’s wallpaper

World War II soon intervened. Joe was drafted but deemed unable to serve because of a kidney issue. He left farming and went to work at a local chemical plant. Irene gave birth to their children, Judith, Stan and Connie. 

Judith Everett and Connie Bedwell join their parents Joe and Irene Huckaby, during the couples’ 80th-anniversary party at the Huckaby’s assisted-living facility in Columbia, Tenn.

Meticulous lists of real estate and automobile purchases kept by the couple document their growth as the nation recovered from the war and proceeded toward a new millennium. A 1930 Ford appears early on the list. Their first Cadillac arrives in 1987. They bought their final car, a Lexus, new in 2014.

Joe and Irene paid $3,500 for their first home in 1947, selling it two years later for a $2,000 profit. Their records show about 10 more real estate purchases through the decades, including a farm in 1968 and Florida condos in the 1980s.

“If I bought a lemon, I’ll make lemonade.”

After retiring in 1981, Joe sold his farm and moved to the city. But golf left him restless. To cope with retirement, he bought a house to restore. It turned out to be overpriced, and meeting the demands of tenants became a burden.

“If I bought a lemon, I’ll make lemonade,” Connie Bedwell remembered her dad saying. 

“We drank a whole lot of lemonade,” Irene added. 

“We drank a whole lot of lemonade.”

When Joe asked Irene what she wanted for their 50th anniversary, the answer was easy. Soon, there were no more tenants.

While Joe and Irene solved problems together, they knew their limits. 

“There was one thing we couldn’t do together, and that was hang wallpaper,” Joe said. “Seemed like everything we … did, we went at it the hard way.”

Before moving to Panama City, Fla., after Joe retired, the couple bought mattresses for their new Florida home and strapped it to their pickup truck. On the way down, the blue tarp over the pickup bed flew off, scattering the load.

A nondescript notebook condenses into one page a lifetime of auto and truck ownership by the Huckabys, mirroring a similar list of the homes the couple bought together.

“Oh Lord, what are we going to do?” Irene asked Joe. “He looked at me and … he said, ‘The first thing I’m going to do is get off of this interstate.’ … He taped everything back together to keep it from blowing away.'”

They later learned it was cheaper — and much easier — to buy a new mattress in Florida.

‘What the Lord says about marriage … they put into practice’

Retirement gave the couple time to travel. In the late 1990s, a church friend who organized bus tours invited Joe and Irene. A 21-day trip took them to California. Later the couple made 11 cruises, their destinations including the Panama Canal, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The Huckabys link their long life together with a shared faith. John Vaughan, their longtime preacher, agrees.

“What the Lord says about marriage, … they put into practice, and it made their lives very successful. I’d venture to say that separation … never entered their mind.”

“What the Lord says about marriage, … they put into practice, and it made their lives very successful,” Vaughan said, describing the couple as fun to be around and happy. “I’d venture to say that separation … never entered their mind. That was just not the kind of people they were.”

Asked to define love, Joe and Irene gave different answers.  

Irene “Nannie” Huckaby asks her husband of 80 years, Joe “Gran” Huckaby, for a kiss, and he obliges.

“I think it’s respecting your spouse” rather than feeling “like you have the whole say-so,” Irene said. “You need to consult him.”

Joe’s response: “You’ve got to work together” and “have feelings for each other.”

Irene added, “When he tells you to jump, you say, ‘How high?’” 

That made Joe laugh — and her family wince. “Nannie!” they exclaimed.

Wished a happy 80th anniversary, Irene responded, “I hope we have 80 more.”

TED PARKS is a Nashville-based correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact letters@christianchronicle.org.

Prospects of a wall, a deportation mandate and more never-ending debates on Capitol Hill don’t change that obligation, regardless of politics or preferences. Those are decisions to be made by the government for the benefit of the governed, not by Christ followers for the benefit of the kingdom.

Yulia Merchant, far left, poses with refugees wearing Ukrainian outfits at the special Thanksgiving meal at the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston.

Moses and the prophets commanded Israel to treat foreigners among them fairly, generously and with compassion.

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).

“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them” (Leviticus 19:33).

“Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge” (Deuteronomy 24:17).

Azizah Hashemi listens to her husband, Mohammad, share stories about their escape from Afghanistan.

In the New Testament, Paul tells the Jews and Gentiles — foreigners to one another — how to welcome one another. And how to get along in this new kingdom — the church.

“Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11).

“He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit” (Ephesians 2:17-18).

The concept of an undocumented immigrant or illegal immigrant is a relatively new one in human history. It’s certainly not one that was known in the centuries when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, or Paul instructed the growing and culturally diverse churches of Europe and Asia, times when borders were more elusive. For centuries, people, parents, clans and tribes have traversed the globe, often in wretched circumstances, sometimes in pursuit of opportunity, more often in pursuit of refuge.

Christians get a lot of things wrong as we navigate the political maelstrom that has consumed not just American politics but the politics of nations around the world. We get sucked in by the rhetoric of party leaders, both aspiring and ambitious, whose motives have far more to do with constituencies, donor bases and economics than justice, compassion and peacemaking.

“For centuries, people, parents, clans and tribes have traversed the globe, often in wretched circumstances, sometimes in pursuit of opportunity, more often in pursuit of refuge”

On this issue, by the grace of God, at least some of us have gotten things right.

The Christian Chronicle has highlighted Christians serving the foreigners among us in this country and elsewhere. In this issue, we tell the story of a tiny church in Massachusetts teaching English to immigrants using Bible stories as their text. In 2024, we reported on a Houston church serving Ukrainians and a Chicago congregation feeding immigrants from Latin America, Ukraine and beyond. No one asks for papers. They just ask, “Are you hungry?”

English language students look on in a class taught by Gareth Flanary .

The civic, economic, educational and health care questions surrounding immigration demand better solutions than our elected leaders have provided thus far. They are real and important questions.

But they are not our questions. Our question must always be, “How can we serve you in the name of Jesus?”

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

Come to think of it, I guess I did.

I asked in a recent column — inspired by the adorableness of my basset hound, Frannie — if we might see furry friends in heaven.

I’ve received so much precious response to that piece, along with a few emails that reminded me why dogs — and not certain grumpy humans — are considered man’s best friend.

In the name of fairness, I’ll start with the negative feedback.

Frannie enjoys time outside in her Oklahoma City neighborhood.

A reader named David Justice (not the retired baseball player, I’m pretty sure) called my article pathetic. He sent me a link to a piece titled “Humans are Not Animals,” written by Dave Miller of Apologetics Press.

“I suspect you do not have enough BIBLE knowledge to fit on the head of a pencil eraser,” Justice wrote. “Read Dave Miller’s article, and maybe you can get enlightened a little.”

I’m intrigued because I never contemplated fitting Bible knowledge on a pencil eraser. Then again, Matthew 19:26 indicates that “with God all things are possible.”

I thanked Justice for his email and asked if he could tell me his hometown since I was compiling responses to my column.

“Do you still stand by your article?” he asked without answering my question.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate reading and considering different perspectives,” I replied.

Tamie Ross takes Frannie for a walk on a cool fall morning in Oklahoma City.

Harold Jackson of Twin Lake, Mich., brought Lassie — not to mention Adam and Eve — into the conversation.

“Why is it that we humanize dogs and eat steak?” Jackson asked. “When God created man, he knew that among the animals, there was not a suitable companion for Adam. Because God saw a need, he made Adam Eve rather than Lassie.

“In heaven, all things will be made new,” Jackson said. “If we still have a desire for the old, heaven may not be for us.”

My column inadvertently stepped knee deep into Christian debate over the nature of heaven itself, as my friend Jeremie Beller, The Christian Chronicle’s opinions editor and dean of the Bible college at Oklahoma Christian University, pointed out.

2 Peter 3:10 says, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.”

Jeremie Beller

Some believers take that verse to mean that God will wipe out the Earth.

“Some people say we will be disembodied spirits for eternity,” Beller explained. “We’re souls. Our body goes back to the dust. Our souls go to be with God. The physical world goes away.”

In that scenario, it’s ludicrous — even heretical — to suggest a dog might go to heaven.

Other believers point to the Bible’s descriptions of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Romans 8:11 says, “And if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”

That side believes that God will redeem creation and everything in it — an eternal Garden of Eden, if you will.

According to that perspective, all creation will live forever in peace and harmony. That includes dogs and possibly cats (the cats are a more difficult theological discussion, if you’ve ever met one).

I’m drastically oversimplifying all of the above, but in my defense, please refer back to that pencil eraser statement.

Steven Clark Goad, who teaches an adult Bible class at the Northwest Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, Fla., voiced a more nuanced concern with my article.

“Thoroughly loved the doggy story about Frannie,” Goad wrote. “This may seem picky, and I can be a bit picky about how we express theological matters, but your use of ‘spending eternity’ some three or four times needs my picking.

“Eternity can’t be spent,” he added. “It’s forever.”

OK, questioning my Bible knowledge is one thing. But taking issue with a professional writer’s word choice? That is serious.

I kid. I kid. Goad makes a really good point.

And I like how he concluded his message: “I hope to see my canine and feline family members over yonder. That, too, may be poor theology, but it gives me comfort. God surely has a plethora of surprises for us.”

One of my favorite responses came from Connie Thomas, a member of the Monette Church of Christ in Arkansas.

“I read the article about your furbaby, Frannie, with a smile on my face and love in my heart,” Thomas said. “I’m an animal lover, and I’ve wrestled with this issue, it seems, forever. I don’t know if pets will go to heaven, but I choose to believe they will.”

Thomas told me she planned to share my column with friends.

“I don’t know if pets will go to heaven, but I choose to believe they will.”

“A few of my friends are animal lovers,” she said, “but the ones that aren’t are the ones I’m showing this to.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that.

I also enjoyed hearing from Mike Weimer, a member of the Central Church of Christ in Athens, Ala.

“I would not be surprised to be greeted by a wagging tailed dog in heaven, but I wouldn’t want to be dogmatic on the subject,” wrote Weimer, who shared “A Lesson from Gracie” devotional he did on his wife’s poodle.

“However, I don’t have similar expectations for seeing cats in heaven,” he added. “They give the impression that they think they are God.”

Like my wife, Tamie, and me, Mark and Susan McClain — longtime Christian Chronicle subscribers who live in Indiana — love their hound dog: a wire-haired dachshund named Henry.

“He teaches us so much about love and the meaning of life,” Mark McClain said. “He makes us laugh every single day! He is an important part of our family. Yes, he will be with us in heaven someday.”

To support that belief, McClain cited Ecclesiastes 3:19: “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless.”

“Many have argued that animals do not have a soul, which I believe is unsubstantiated from a biblical perspective,” McClain wrote. “The Bible seems to be silent on this matter.”

He recalled hearing a wise minister tell a child, “God will provide whatever it takes to make you happy, even if that means that your dog will be in heaven someday.”

To McClain, that means that Henry, Frannie and many other dogs will be in heaven.

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

As a small group of Americans watched, the pair gathered with other villagers in the sparse shade under tents and trees.

The older woman, Asabar Idi, had undergone a leg amputation a few years prior. Recently, cataracts had begun taking away her sight.

Naomi Ayuba carries her mother-in-law, Asabar Idi, who is an amputee and visually impaired.

“This is a timely intervention, we must say,” said Sanday Samuel, the Dongol chief’s representative and a community wakili sadarwa — a role similar to that of an ambassador.

“We want to thank God that this is coming right at the time that it’s been needed the most,” he added.

This was the first joint medical and dental clinic hosted by Hope Springs International, a U.S.-based ministry associated with Churches of Christ that had previously operated in the area digging wells.

The nearest medical facility to this farming community of about 700 people is about a 90-minute walk.

To avoid the lengthy journey, villagers often opt to see traditional healers without medical degrees or formal training — one of whom performed Idi’s amputation, a procedure that may not have been a medical necessity.

“Honestly, most of the time you find out that the professionals here are really not actually professionals,” Samuel said. “And then those that are sincere … often make referrals to bigger hospitals, but then because of the economic situations, our people don’t end up going. So bringing interventions like this right to our doorsteps is huge.”

A child receives medical care in a schoolroom repurposed into an exam room for a single-day clinic by Hope Springs International in Dongol, Nigeria.

An elderly women carries the medicine she received at a Hope Springs International clinic back to her mud house in Dongol, Nigeria.

In northeastern Nigeria, 8.3 million are estimated to be in need, according to a 2023 U.S. Agency for International Development report. An additional 4.4 million are estimated to experience food insecurity.

But despite the great need for intervention, few international nonprofits and humanitarian aid organizations operate in the region.

Foreign aid is often deterred by the presence of the terrorist organizations ISIS-West Africa and Boko Haram.

Outside the makeshift clinic, local men carrying long guns stood guard. They joined a 13-person armed security team the Nigerian government provided Hope Springs while in Gombe State.

“Before the onset of the insurgency and the insecurity that now abounds everywhere, we used to have an opportunity to come work and be able to help propagate the Gospel here,” said Rambi Ayala, director of operations in Africa for Hope Springs, which is headquartered in Gallatin, Tenn.

Ayala, a graduate of the School of Biblical Studies in Jos, Nigeria, previously served two consecutive four-year terms as a state representative for Billiri East in the Nigerian State Houses of Assembly.

“Today, some of us who are here are a bit more concerned about safety, because of some of the extremist elements that we have all over the place,” he added. “Gombe, for instance, is located in the northeastern part of the country, and the northeast is the hub of Boko Haram.”

A girl runs toward the tents outside a Hope Springs International clinic, where Dongol’s community of about 700 assembled.

‘They kill people in Nigeria’

When Hope Springs first reached out to health care professionals to recruit a team, Jennifer Collins, a nurse practitioner, deleted the email.

“Nope, they kill people in Nigeria,” Collins recalled thinking. “They don’t like White people. They don’t like Christians.”

It wasn’t the first refusal of that nature Lee Hodges, president of Hope Springs, had heard.

The 79-year-old Christian has made 15 trips to Africa and oversees operations in Chad, Nigeria and Niger.

Security personnel provided by the Nigerian government stands in front of a derelict building in Dongol, Nigeria.

Safety is always a concern, Hodges said. He joined Collins — who conceded after a follow-up letter and much prayer — and 10 other Americans on the recent medical trip.

“What people don’t often understand is that it’s Muslims killing Muslims,” said Hodges, who also serves as a shepherd for the NorthField Church, a church plant of the Madison Church of Christ in Tennessee. “They’re not just killing Christians. I think they put Christians on the top of their kill list, but they’re ruthless.”

Terrorist organizations in Nigeria have killed about 40,000 people and displaced as many as 3 million since 2009, according to the CIA.

“Especially in this part of Nigeria, the deeper northern part of Nigeria, it has never been easy,” said Ayala, who served as minister for the Kado Church of Christ prior to joining Hope Springs. “We face all kinds of persecutions here and there.”

“Especially in this part of Nigeria, the deeper northern part of Nigeria, it has never been easy. We face all kinds of persecutions here and there.”

‘Corruption, violence — it’s survival’

Security isn’t the only operational challenge of doing aid work in Nigeria.

At the makeshift clinic, security officers took money from anyone with financial means, directing them to the front of lines. Desperate mothers with ill children held out crumpled dollars to volunteers, hoping to bypass waiting areas. Elderly men bought patient forms from others who had already been triaged.

“​​Corruption is going to be everywhere,” said Jon Harris, a Hope Springs board member and the videographer on the trip. “For places like this, corruption, violence — it’s survival.”

In some ways, the corruption is cultural, Hodges said. Bribes are commonplace and expected.

Women wait in line at a Hope Springs International clinic in Putoki, Nigeria.

Yet despite the risks, Hope Springs plans to keep expanding.

To ensure smooth operations in Nigeria, Hope Springs employs trustworthy individuals — Christians, many who are members of Churches of Christ or graduates of the School of Biblical Studies. Board members and donors regularly receive status updates through videos and photos.

The organization has dug more than 200 wells since beginning its operations in northeastern Nigeria. At least 50 of those were sponsored by the NorthField Church. 

“It’s always water and health — it always comes in that order — and then education, if at all possible,” Hodges said.

A mother breastfeeds her crying child while a doctor with Hope Springs International discusses the infant’s malnutrition diagnoses.

A Muslim girl waits in line with women outside a Hope Springs International clinic.

$15.50 for the blind to see

The joint medical and dental clinic marked the organization’s venture into a new frontier: health care.

Eleven American health care professionals and volunteers joined a team of 23 Nigerian doctors, pharmacists, optometrists and dentists hired by Hope Springs to host clinics in four rural locations.

Tom Haddon, pastor of the NorthField Church, had watched the videos of wells changing lives in rural villages for years through Hope Springs — but this was his first time venturing to the West African country in person. 

A boy peers through the window of a schoolroom that was repurposed into a pharmacy for a two-day clinic in northeastern Nigeria.

Watching Idi balance precariously on her daughter-in-law’s back, he was struck by the comparison to the lame man in Mark 2.

Like the friends of the paralyzed man, Idi’s daughter-in-law had overcome challenges — carrying her mother-in-law through the fields to the clinic, waiting in line outside in the heat.

Upon learning of her cataracts, Haddon thought of a second story — the blind man at Bethesda — which appears only a few chapters later in Mark 8.

Dr. Victoria Dillehay, right, organizes dental instruments in an empty church building being used by Hope Springs International for a makeshift clinic.

A clinic worker administers a malaria rapid diagnostic test during a two-day Hope Springs clinic in Shela, Nigeria.

The Hope Spring’s clinic, operating out of a two-classroom school, couldn’t do anything for Iri’s condition except offer a referral to the nearest hospital for surgery — an operation that would cost 25,000 naira.

“The daughter said that would be hard for them to raise,” Haddon said. “I asked how many 25,000 nairas was, and then when we did the math, it was $15.50.”

Iri was just one of 75 patients from the community referred for cataract surgery.

Moved by the low cost for a life-changing operation, Haddon pledged that the NorthField congregation would cover the cost of the surgeries.

“We can’t tell her to pick up her mat and walk, but we can give her her sight back,” Haddon said.

“Our church model is start where we are, spread out in the communities around us and then go to the ends of the earth,” he added, citing Acts 1:8. “Hope Springs is our ‘ends of the earth.’”

Nearly 4,500 patients were treated during the seven-day campaign, Ayala and Hodges estimated.

A girl gets a tooth pulled by Hope Springs International dental staff.

“We are more than a humanitarian organization,” Hodges said. “Humanitarian organizations focus on good business and money. Yes, it’s life changing, but we’re looking for something deeper. We want people to see the love that Christ had for them.

“There has to be a humanitarian part that goes with the Gospel,” he stressed. “It’s exactly what Jesus did — he fed, he healed, but he also led people to Christ.” 

“There has to be a humanitarian part that goes with the Gospel. It’s exactly what Jesus did — he fed, he healed, but he also led people to Christ.” 

Boys wait to be seen by a doctor at a Hope Springs International clinic.

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

Under a gray Friday afternoon sky, seven Ukrainian women braved cold, gusty winds as they took turns reading the names and ages of children killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 34 months ago.

Artem, Yehor and Kyrylo — ages 15, 10 and 5 — were probably brothers. Nikol died at 13 months. Rodyna, listed as “unborn,” likely perished with his mother. The plaintive ringing of a small bell, mounted on a small, wooden platform surrounded by Ukrainian flags, followed each name.

In all, the seven women read 356 names. They could have read many more — if only the names were known. At least 600 children have died since the start of the conflict on Feb. 24, 2022.

The somber litany formed the emotional centerpiece of “Remember the Children of Ukraine,” a day-after-Thanksgiving observance to honor the children “killed, wounded, displaced, or orphaned” since the 2022 start of the Russian invasion, according to Rescue Ukraine, the nonprofit that organized the event.

Olga Tkachenko works with other Ukrainian and American Christians to place 600 bears in rows near the Washington Monument.

Jeff Abrams directs the Alabama-based ministry that has worked in Ukraine for 30 years. Formerly minister for the Tuscumbia Church of Christ, Abrams recently stepped down from the pulpit to work full time with Rescue Ukraine.

Abrams and a group of more than 40 people traveled 15 hours by bus from Tuscumbia to reach the nation’s capital. Most were Ukrainian Christians displaced by the conflict. Others were U.S. church members passionate about Ukraine. Additional demonstrators came from places including Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee and Washington state.

‘It’s almost like a message from God’

The bears caught some eyes.

Media outlets arrived and mounted cameras on tripods. Passers-by stopped and asked about the display. Some posed for photos with the bears. A few even helped stuff the bears in black plastic bags after the ceremony for eventual shipment to Ukraine.

Abrams has traveled to Ukraine countless times since the 1990s. In September, as he helped Ukrainian Christians relocate from the front lines, he saw many stuffed animals commemorating the loss of children. In Kharkiv, a city just a few miles from the Russian border, a teddy bear honored the memory of a girl named Sophia who died in a missile strike as she sat on a park bench.

In another war-torn city, Dnipro, “I saw this big mound of teddy bears,” Abrams said. “It’s almost like a message from God. This is … the symbol that you need to use to communicate.”

“I saw this big mound of teddy bears. It’s almost like a message from God. This is … the symbol that you need to use to communicate.”

With the bears and the Washington Monument as backdrop, speakers portrayed the brutality of the Russian invasion, singers performed the Ukrainian songs, and two young violinists performed a beloved Ukrainian composition.

Behind the teddy bears, some 15 group members braved the cold to hold a long banner reading “Remember the children of Ukraine killed by Russia.”

Seven Ukrainian women take turns reading the names and ages of children killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began 34 months ago.

Following a saxophone rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and an a cappella performance of the state anthem of Ukraine, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, powerfully denounced the suffering of Ukrainian children.

Since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and pro-Russian separatists seized power in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, “there is not a war crime that Russia did not commit in Ukraine,” Markarova said. “But what they do to Ukrainian children is probably the most despicable of the crimes.”

“There is not a war crime that Russia did not commit in Ukraine. But what they do to Ukrainian children is probably the most despicable of the crimes.”

Besides the 600 children who have died since February 2022, more than 1,420 have suffered injuries, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office. Nearly a quarter of school-age children are unable to attend classes in person.

Markarova also decried the forced deportation of Ukrainian children, echoing other officials who maintain that Russia has forcibly transferred thousands of youths to its territory, according to the U.N.

Bears placed near the Washington Monument represent more than 600 Ukrainian children killed in Russia’s invasion.

The ambassador thanked Abrams and the event organizers for giving voice to the children forever silenced. “I know that God will hear all of our prayers,” she said. The day “will come when we will be standing here … saying ‘thank you’ and praising the peace that came.”

Christmas is the holiday of hope, Markarova said. “It’s the holiday that tells us that light always wins.”

Devastated, suffocated and angry

Tuscumbia church member Viktor Semikoz led the Ukrainian anthem and a song called “Prayer for Ukraine,” which he described as a petition for God’s help — and a vehicle of hope.

“When I was singing, I felt a deep sense of responsibility,” said Semikoz, who studied accordion during his college years in Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine where some of the bloodiest infantry fighting since World War II occurred before it fell to the Russians in May 2023.

“I also thought about the future when there will be no earth as we know it, and we will be with God, and there will be no more wars or suffering.”

“I thought about every word I sang,” said Semikoz, a church song leader for nearly 25 years, with help from interpreter Kate Hladkykh. “I also thought about the future when there will be no earth as we know it, and we will be with God, and there will be no more wars or suffering.”

For Hladkykh, one of five Tuscumbia church members who read the names of children during the ceremony, the experience was overwhelming.

“At the same time I feel … just devastated and also feel angry,” she said. Each name represents “a life full of potential, just cut short by this terrible violence.”

Another reader, Julia Kachuk, fled the fighting with her daughter and now worships with the Tuscumbia church.

Hanna Michshenko wears a heart in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

“The most painful thing (was) to voice the names of unborn children,” Kachuk said. “It suffocates so much that there is nothing to breathe, and there is no strength to move on.”

Finding the names of the children required detective work. Church member Hanna Michshenko combed news services and social media for months for references to the deaths containing concrete information such as name, age and place of death. Michshenko, 19, cried continuously as she compiled the list — especially when she came across a 14-year-old girl also named Hanna Michshenko and when she found children who died on her birthday or her mom’s.

Bears for Russians

After the ceremony, Abrams and about 20 others boarded a bus and rode to the Russian embassy. Using blue-and-yellow ribbons, the group tied a banner declaring “Russia murders children” to the embassy gate above five of the ceremony’s white bears sprinkled with a red dye, symbolizing blood.

“Can I give you one of these bears?” Abrams asked Russian officials through a talkbox at the gate, as members of the group translated his request into Russian. “We’re Christians; we want to give these bears to Russia.”

Jeff Abrams and fellow Christians hold a banner and bears stained with red paint symbolizing blood outside the Russian embassy.

Soon, an officer wearing a U.S. Secret Service emblem approached the group and asked them to remove the banner and the bears.

The group completed the day’s commemoration at the Embassy of Ukraine, where it held a banner reading “Remember the children of Ukraine” while posing for a photo on the front steps.

For Hladkykh, the events in Washington served as a proclamation.

In a world growing numb to war, she said, “I think we’re preaching a very powerful message.”

Earlier in the day, with Ukrainian children’s names still ringing in the audience’s ears, Abrams asked for God’s intervention to end the bloody conflict in Ukraine.

Christians hold teddy bears, some with names, representing killed Ukrainian children outside the Russian embassy in Washington.

“Touch the hearts of those that can stop this war,” he prayed. “There’ve been too many tears, too many that have died.

“And we beg you, God, stop this war. Bring peace to Ukraine.”

TED PARKS is a Nashville-based correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact letters@christianchronicle.org.

These are some of the benefits homeschooling parents say they can offer their kids that are unavailable — or available to a much lesser degree — in public or even private Christian schools.

Sisters Rebecca Stewart and Jessica Dean — co-directors of Virtue Road Academy, a homeschooling tutorial based in Tennessee — have homeschooled their children for about a decade.

They’re part of an increasing number of parents choosing to educate their children at home.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 3.4 percent of school-age children — roughly 1.8 million, based on an estimated 53 million total school-age children — were homeschooled in the 2022-23 school year.

That’s up from 2.8 percent, roughly 1.5 million, in 2018-2019 — just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which Stewart and NCES say impacted homeschooling trends.

Previously, the rate of homeschooling had peaked at 3.4 percent in 2012 before beginning years of decline.

Stewart, 43, taught in public and private elementary schools for 12 years before she began homeschooling her oldest child, Carter, now 15.

She was concerned her son might get bored academically, feeling he was already ahead of the kindergartners at her school. She also feared for his safety.

Carter Stewart greets another attendee at a homeschooling formal.

“I knew that every time they had a school shooting that technically it could be anywhere,” Stewart said.

She also homeschools her 10-year-old son, Weston, and 8-year-old daughter, Everly. They attend the South Gate Church of Christ in Columbia, Tenn., with Stewart’s husband, Greg.

For Dean, 47, the first attempt at homeschooling came when her oldest child, Katlyn, now 25, was in elementary school.

But it took a few tries — going back and forth among public school, private school and homeschooling — before bullying and other social issues led the Deans to fully embrace homeschooling.

“I wasn’t educated enough about it,” Dean said of her difficulty getting started. “So we put her back in, and it just didn’t go well. And finally, at a certain point, the beginning of 10th grade, she’s like, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ So we took her out. We said, ‘We’ll make this work.’ And by then, I had already educated myself.”

Dean has also homeschooled her daughter, Lydia, 22, and son, Corbin, 16. They attend the Highland Church of Christ in Columbia with Dean’s husband, Garrett.

Jessica Dean, right, and Rebecca Stewart present a homeschooling seminar at Faulkner University’s Bible lectureship.

Many parents similarly struggle to get started with homeschooling, Dean told a small crowd gathered at Faulkner University for a recent seminar she and Stewart presented.

“That first year can be kind of rough, and some people will give up right away because they’re like, ‘Oh, I just don’t have it together, like Susie Q over here,’” she said. “But Susie Q may have been doing it for like five years, and she’s already figured it out.”

Stewart said many homeschooling parents make the mistake of trying to imitate public or private school at home.

“If you try to … have your kid doing schoolwork sitting down somewhere for seven or eight hours at your home, that just doesn’t work,” she told The Christian Chronicle.

And while there are challenges associated with homeschooling, “it’s just a matter of choosing your hard,” she added.

Stewart said parents with children in public or private school often vent to her about their own difficulties, such as dealing with bad teachers and the logistics of getting kids to school every day.

Dean added that it’s easier to help a child work through a hard day at home than at school.

Still, parents have to make some sacrifices to homeschool their kids.

Some get remote, part-time or second-shift jobs. Many, like Stewart and Dean, give up their careers or education paths entirely.

Dean had already chosen to be a stay-at-home parent with the birth of her second daughter, Lydia, who has Down syndrome and nonverbal autism. At the time, Dean was studying at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn. Now she does artwork for real estate on the side. Stewart, the former teacher, tutors.

But while their husbands have supported them — financially and emotionally — they know even single parents who have made homeschooling work.

Dean was adamant that “anyone can do it” with the right support system of family, friends and church members.

Navigating schooling costs

Beyond the potential loss of income, homeschooling can carry other costs that, while much lower than for private school, can be more burdensome than those associated with public education.

According to TrustedCare, a national child care organization, homeschooling parents spend $700 to $2,800 per year on average. The cost of online homeschooling programs can vary more widely, from $500 to $5,000. Those costs include curriculum, supplies and extracurricular activities.

But they can be lessened significantly by using the right resources, Stewart said.

Rebecca Stewart and Jessica Dean presented their homeschooling seminar in Faulkner University’s Rotunda.

She recommends finding books from the library and Goodwill, buying used books and reselling them later and teaching subjects like math and reading through everyday objects and activities — particularly for younger children.

Controversial programs known as school vouchers or school choice can also help parents pay for homeschooling materials by reallocating taxpayer funds that would go to their local school system.

But Stewart and Dean caution that those programs may have unintended consequences.

“When you have the public funds from taxes that are going to pay for this private school over here or these homeschooling supplies over here,” Stewart said, “then the government’s going to want accountability.”

Virtue Road Academy students create the Homeschool Herald newspaper, distributed at a local library and coffee shop in Columbia, Tenn.

She said multiple friends have come from states that required a certified teacher to come into their home to ensure they were meeting certain requirements.

“And that’s just very invasive,” she added.

Homeschooling regulations vary by state, but they can include notification to the school district, degree requirements for the teaching parent, mandated subjects and regular reports and assessments.

Finding a community of parents

Another concern many have with homeschooling is a lack of social interaction. But homeschooling groups like Stewart and Dean’s academy can provide an opportunity for kids to socialize and participate in similar events to public school children.

Virtue Road Academy is a homeschooling tutorial that has about 20 children in seventh to 12th grade. Tutorials typically offer some weekly classes that parents can drop their kids off at — which sets them apart from co-ops, at which parents stay with their kids and take turns teaching.

Rebecca Stewart and Jessica Dean emphasized planning, cost savings, Bible education and relationships in their homeschooling seminar.

Both can be part of hybrid schooling, where children have part of their schooling at home and part in a classroom.

Stewart said she and her sister started the academy last year to cater to an underserved group of older homeschooled children. Besides classes, those students also participate in field trips, formals, pop-up history programs, paint parties and other events.

Virtue Road Academy students pose for a group photo at their formal.

There are also groups of homeschooled children that participate in clubs and sports — kickball, cross-country running, board game club, tea party club, book club and nature club, for example.

Regardless of what kind of homeschooling group parents join, Stewart said it’s important to have some kind of community.

“If you are new to homeschooling, you want to find the other homeschooling people,” she said. “Because it can be isolating, and you’re going to have challenges that other people don’t have. So build those mom relationships and dad (relationships) when possible.”

Tailoring an individual curriculum

Parents may also be concerned about their homeschooled children falling behind their peers, but planning and accountability are key to ensuring they stay on track — or even get ahead — Stewart and Dean said in their seminar.

“If you are planning for a year, you might say, ’What do I want my child to be able to do by the end of this year?’” Stewart said. “It could be academic. It could be behavioral. It could be spiritual. It could be just relationships, social experiences.”

Elizabeth Snively and her son, S.J.

Elizabeth Snively, who attended the seminar with her 6-year-old son, S.J., was homeschooled until eighth grade. She believes homeschooling helped her become more advanced educationally than her peers when she entered public school — even being put into honors classes.

Now, she homeschools S.J. and plans to homeschool her 4-year-old, Ashton. That allows them to travel with Snively’s husband, A.J. — who preaches for the Brighton Church of Christ in Michigan — to Christian college lectureships like this one.

A small crowd of current, potential and former homeschooling parents and students gathered for Stewart and Dean’s homeschooling seminar.

That kind of individualized education and flexibility are some of the key benefits of homeschooling, parents say.

They can use school time to teach their children life skills — organization, simple finances, cursive writing, how to change a tire, cooking, social skills and time management, for example.

Aretha Harris

Aretha Harris, another seminar attendee who homeschooled her son, James Harris III, said she would take him to the store and show him how to interact with people and count money, “just the little things that you do, to help him as he grows up in society.”

Harris emphasized that she and her husband — James Harris Jr., who preaches for the North Gulfport Church of Christ in Gulfport, Miss. — didn’t neglect more standard subjects, but they tried to make their curriculum fun and engaging.

And individualized education can be particularly beneficial for those with disabilities or other learning disadvantages, like Dean’s daughter Lydia.

Lydia was in a special education classroom before being homeschooled. But at home, she was able to focus on learning how to communicate her needs, how to feed herself and other important day-to-day skills. And she was able to graduate with a special diploma.

Homeschooling allows Stewart’s son Carter, who has ADHD, to do schoolwork with additional time, in a different learning space or with headphones to block out distractions.

“If you’re doing this, you truly have a customized education,” Stewart said. “And if you see your child has a particular strength, you can nurture that strength. Or if your child has a weakness, you can adapt and supplement materials to help them strengthen it.”

Providing a Christian education

Most importantly for many parents, homeschooling gives their children the opportunity to learn through a Christian worldview — even the ability to incorporate Bible study and lessons on how to find and read Scripture, lead a prayer or teach a Bible class.

Both Snively and Harris noted that God was an important part of their homeschooling experience.

Snively said her 6-year-old has Bible studies every day and has already memorized 35 Bible verses.

Students in Virtue Road Academy participate in a paint party.

Harris said her son had Bible lessons, too, and learned how to conduct the five aspects of worship — prayer, preaching, singing, communion and collection. He’s now a biblical studies major at Faulkner.

According to the 2023 NCES report, a desire to provide moral and religious instruction ranked among the top five reasons parents chose to homeschool, along with a concern about school environments, a desire to emphasize family life and a dissatisfaction with local academic instruction.

That’s part of the reason Stewart and Dean say churches should be more involved in offering homeschooling resources — like the Highland church in Columbia, which hosts Virtue Road Academy classes.

“Your children’s relationship with God and their worldview is being shaped every day,” Stewart said in the Faulkner seminar. “And we don’t stand up here like we’ve got it all figured out. … but we just want to say these things to remind you: Do not miss the teachable moments to work God into your every day.”

CALVIN COCKRELL is the media editor for The Christian Chronicle and serves as the young adults minister for the North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Alabama. Reach him at calvin@christianchronicle.org.

As a single woman in my 20s, I’ve experienced my fair share of matchmaking attempts and not-so-subtle comments about eligible bachelors.

While I used to find this annoying, I’ve come to realize that I don’t mind being set up. There’s just one problem — most of what I’ve experienced isn’t matchmaking. It’s hinting.

Most well-meaning matchmakers simply mention that “so-and-so is a nice boy” or watch closely when a man my age is in the vicinity, sending me the occasional knowing look or nod of encouragement.

That’s a hint, not a setup. There’s no gracious way for me to respond to an assertion that so-and-so is a nice young man. I usually resort to nervous laughter and brush off the comment. This isn’t necessarily because I’m uninterested; there’s just no good way to respond.

Other attempts center on throwing me into proximity with someone. In multiple cases, I’ve been told that I’m being set up, but no one told the guy that! The setup solely hinged on putting us in the same room and hoping for the best. That can feel awkward, to say the least. Have you ever tried to act normally while people watch to see if you’re hitting it off with Dave from small group?

Have you ever tried to act normally while people watch to see if you’re hitting it off with Dave from small group?

I won’t pretend to be a dating expert. In fact, you might call me chronically single (hence my experience with setups). However, as I matured in my dating philosophy, I realized that the church is an integral part of creating healthy relationships. I want to get married and have a family, and dating is hard.

I need Christians I trust — my church family — to connect me with like-minded, faithful men.

Matchmaking shouldn’t be complicated, and if you follow some basic guidelines, it can be simple.

Matchmaking shouldn’t be complicated, and if you follow some basic guidelines, it can be simple.

So, for the aspiring matchmakers out there, here are a few tips.

• 1. Use a tried-and-true, foolproof way to know if someone is willing to be set up — ask! Check with both people before moving forward.

• 2. Make sure you can recommend both parties. Do you know each person’s character? Can you vouch for him or her? (Please note that “single Christian with a pulse” is not a ringing endorsement.)

• 3. Most importantly, offer an actionable step. Invite both parties over for dinner. Set up a blind date. Whatever it is, bring an ask to the table — something that can be accepted or declined, even if it’s as simple as, “Can I give your number to Andrew?”

So, please, set me up! I’ll go on the blind date! I’ll give out my number!

If you ask permission, can vouch for the person and have an actionable step that I can take, I am willing to meet new people and make new connections.

Now, for the necessary disclaimers.

To the aspiring matchmakers out there: Thank you for helping people connect. Don’t take it personally if a match doesn’t work out. Successful setups allow two people to get to know each other. Additional expectations can be counterproductive.

To the aspiring matchmakers out there: Thank you for helping people connect. Don’t take it personally if a match doesn’t work out.

To my fellow single Christians: I know that dating is hard. It’s OK if you don’t want to be set up, but I’d encourage you to be open to new possibilities. At the very least, you’ll meet new people.

Finally, to the brave souls who have set me up: Thank you. I truly appreciate it.

MAKYRA WILLIAMSON served as an intern for The Christian Chronicle in summer 2021. A member of the Southwest Church of Christ in Tigard, Ore., Williamson is the community outreach director for Oregon Right to Life. She is a 2019 graduate of Harding University in Searcy, Ark. 

To offer feedback on this column, email letters@christianchronicle.org.

A continent and an invasion away, a retreat some call “Camp Amerikraine in America” now brings together displaced Ukrainian believers in the U.S. for fellowship and solace from the trauma of war.

About 65 people — mainly Ukrainian members of Churches of Christ joined by American Christians passionate about Ukraine — gathered for three days of fellowship at Valley View Camp, about 25 miles north of Nashville.

Ukrainians in America yearn for that fellowship, retreat organizer Bohdan Yasinskyi told The Christian Chronicle, with help from interpreter Tamara McNiece. He compared the camp to the experience of foreigners visiting the embassy of their home country — a place where “they take care of you,” he said.

Yasinskyi came to the U.S. in 2022 at the onset of the Russian invasion. He lives in Tuscumbia, Ala., after serving in ministry in the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Dnipro and Kyiv.

“I cannot go back to home to do it in Ukraine, but I can do a little island of Ukrainians here.”

Camp participants came from states that included Alabama, Florida, Minnesota, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, Yasinskyi said.

“I cannot go back to home to do it in Ukraine, but I can do a little island of Ukrainians here,” Yasinskyi said about the retreat, which he compared to Christmas, New Year’s and Disneyland.

‘Ukrainians will never be the same’

This year was the second time Ukrainian Christians gathered at Valley View Camp.

Built by the Madison Church of Christ in Tennessee, the camp operates as a nonprofit with close ties to the congregation.

Liudmila Torshyna performs an after-dinner skit with Victoria Semikoz, in yellow. Torshyna is costumed as a Ukrainian babysya (grandmother). The skit focused on how the passage of time changes people.

The Madison church, which supported Yasinskyi’s work in Ukraine, underwrote both Ukrainian gatherings and even provided cooks, said elder Brandon Adams.

In addition to classes, crafts, worship and even short drama, the camp offered two sessions about conflict led by Becky Kelly, a licensed counselor and a member of a different Madison Church of Christ, this one in Alabama. While Kelly focused on marriage, she pointed out that conflict was a topic with wider implications.

“Conflict is a natural part of every human relationship, and it’s a necessary part,” Kelly told the audience. “Conflict has a goal, and that is mutual understanding.”

Given the trauma many had experienced and the stoic character of Ukrainians, organizer Yasinskyi felt it useful to “sneak in” some therapy.

Liudmila Torshyna and Olena Yasinskyi hug at Camp Amerikraine in America.

“In our country … people keep it to themselves,” he explained. They’re still in shock. “They will tell you, ‘I’m fine.’ … They reject the problem.”

War brought the potential for interpersonal conflicts, Yasinskyi said. Some people stayed in Ukraine, others decided to leave.

And within the country tension can flare between people far from the violence and those near it.

“I think Ukrainians will never be the same as they used to be. Even when war will be gone, it’s not going to be the same.”

People want simple fairness, the organizer said. They’ve seen injustice on many levels. “This feeling gets stronger and stronger and stronger, and it’s like, eating you,” interpreter McNiece said.

“I think Ukrainians will never be the same as they used to be,” Yasinskyi said, his eyes moist. “Even when war will be gone, it’s not going to be the same.”

A harrowing escape

Participants at this year’s retreat recalled harrowing escapes from the Russian invasion. Olga Tkachenko, now a hairdresser in Tuscumbia, remembered waking up to the explosions of bombs in Mariupol, the port city in southeastern Ukraine that fell in May 2022 after a savage three-month Russian siege.

Unsure how long the conflict would last, Tkachenko took refuge with her teenage daughters Katya and Masha in the basement of a nearby building. Ukrainian forces then evacuated the basement. When the bus to the city’s drama theater was full, Tkachenko and her daughters were diverted to a theater nearby. Russia bombed the drama theater on March 16, killing 600 people, The Associated Press reported.

Tkachenko felt the shock waves.

With Russian forces closing in, Tkachenko decided to leave — on foot.

Hungry and weak, mother and daughters started walking at 6 a.m. She told her girls to pull up their hoodies to avoid seeing the bodies along the way. After 12 hours, they arrived at a Russian-controlled village, then the next day entered territory in Ukrainian hands.

“You understand that you are leaving your house (with no way to return). You don’t know what’s going on in your church. You have hopes that they are still alive.”

Grateful for the first shower in a month, Tkachenko said, she made her way with her daughters to Romania, Poland and, in May 2023, to the U.S.

Katya, 18, speaking through interpreter Liudmila Torshyna, remembered her “really big fear” as they walked.

“You understand that you are leaving your house” with no way to return, she said. “You don’t know what’s going on in your church. You have hopes that they are still alive.”

Broken and mended

Among the American Christians who have helped the Ukrainians find safety is Jeff Abrams, who recently retired from the pulpit of the Tuscumbia Church of Christ. He began making trips to Ukraine in the 1990s. Recently, he founded the nonprofit Rescue Ukraine.

He and fellow church members have helped hundreds of refugees relocate to Poland, France, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe. About 25 Ukrainians moved to Tuscumbia, a town in north Alabama, and 13 to Mobile on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Others are scattered throughout the U.S.

Jeff Abrams stands next to a blackboard in a classroom of the Church of Christ in Kramatorsk, Ukraine. “On my first visit there after the start of the war I wrote “GOD SAVE THIS PLACE.” I’ve signed and dated it on each visit thereafter. Others who come there have embraced this tradition.”

That Ukrainians traveled to Tennessee from so many places says something about fellowship, Abrams said. “It tells you that these people see the need to get together.”

Abrams started Camp Amerikraine in 2003. The camp follows a long-held Ukrainian tradition of bringing people together for education and recreation. Oddly enough, the Christian camp hosted its first session in a facility once used by the “Komsomol,” a communist youth organization.

“There are just dozens, perhaps hundreds of these old camps around there,” Abrams said. In addition to cabins, amphitheaters and soccer fields, “you could see the old Soviet propaganda stuff, the murals on the walls, the hammer and sickle, the statues, the carvings or paintings of Lenin, Stalin.”

Amerikraine later moved to Dnipro, a city in eastern Ukraine known for its rocket industry. The camp made a temporary move away from Dnipro in 2014 after pro-Russian separatists seized control of parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

After the invasion began in 2022, Camp Amerikraine moved to a facility in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Organizers added a second camp near Warsaw, Poland, for refugees.

Near Lviv, Ukraine, Alexander Rodichev takes a photo of the Christians who participated in Camp Amerikraine, an annual gathering of believers from the Eastern European nation and the U.S. This year church members from Alabama helped to organize camps for refugees in the Warsaw, Poland, area and in Lviv.

Despite the many moves, the camp has maintained its Ukrainian culture, said Angela Hilton, a Ukrainian who interpreted for presenter Becky Kelly at the Tennessee camp.

“American culture is more individually set, and Ukrainian culture is more like collectivism,” said Hilton, a native of Kramatorsk who came to the U.S. in 2008. She recalled her years in Ukraine and the desire “to get together and just spend some time together.” Neither plans nor a tidy house was required to “have a cup of tea and, like, cook something quickly,” she said.

Ukrainian Christians circle their chairs for an evening of singing, study and prayer at the Greenbrier Ukrainian retreat.

“I know some people from this camp with whom I have history,” Hilton added, “like from 20 years ago or 25 years ago.”

Katya, Tkachenko’s daughter, said that it was important to get together with Christians from other cities. At her first Camp Amerikraine in Poland in 2022, she enjoyed seeing how people from different places approached the Bible. “Sometimes people interpret it in different ways,” she said.

Playground equipment stands among the ruins of a school in Pokrovsk, Ukraine. “In my travels across Ukraine I have literally seen this heartbreaking scene repeated dozens of times,” said Jeff Abrams, a Church of Christ minister and founder of Rescue Ukraine, during a recent visit to the besieged Eastern European nation. “Today I saw at least six bombed-out schools.”

Speaking near the end of the second day of the retreat, Abrams talked about his recent visit to Ukraine and compared the material destruction — and, in some places, the rebuilding that has followed — to human brokenness and divine redemption.

“Even more significant than the brokenness of a building or a park is the brokenness of people,” Abrams said. “There are a lot of broken hearts in Ukraine. There are a lot of broken families. … We understand there’s brokenness all around the world. And our brokenness doesn’t have to define who we are.

“That’s our story. We’re broken, but with the help of God, we’re mended.”

TED PARKS is a Nashville-based correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact letters@christianchronicle.org.

I’ve heard that argument more than once. Sometimes I agree. My life would be much easier without any mention of Republicans or Democrats — in the pews or in these pages.

But avoidance isn’t a solution, especially when your city has some 30,000 migrants bused in from border states, said Patrick Odum, one of the ministers for the Northwest Church of Christ in Chicago. I visited the congregation a few months ago and got to see its members in action as they used their food pantry to meet the growing demand. I also helped members of Chicago’s Lakeview Church of Christ unload a shipment of groceries for their food program.

During the Northwest church’s giveaway, I met immigrants and refugees from all over — Poland, Mexico, Venezuela, Ukraine — and listened to their stories. As politicians debate the rising tide of illegal immigration in our country, our brothers and sisters are washing immigrants’ feet.

Brother Odum joined us at Harding University as part of our first-ever Norton Colloquium. Four of us from the Chronicle traveled to Searcy to present classes on topics that were close to the heart of our former editor Howard Norton.

Lectureship participants pray before a session.

At least a hundred different topics swirl in my brain as I think about our experience at Inspire: the 101st Harding Lectureship. We loved interacting with readers. We heard thought-provoking messages from Orpheus J. Heyward, Rubel Shelly and many more.

With the U.S. presidential election less than a month away, I’m compelled to focus on our second session, “How Should We Talk About Politics? Or Should We?” moderated by our editor-in-chief, Bobby Ross Jr. In addition to Odum, panelists were Jeremie Beller, dean of the College of Bible at Oklahoma Christian University and the Chronicle’s opinions editor; and Nathan Guy, preaching minister for the West Side Church of Christ in Searcy.

You can’t “just tell Bible stories and ignore politics” when facing the problems in your community, Odum said. “So, what do you do? You minister. You find people. You get in their lives and try to help them with this huge problem that they’re facing.”

The church should be consistent in its witness, Beller added, and “should be preaching against the abuse of migrants and immigrants before it’s the latest issue to come out of Washington.”

Jeremie Beller, opinions editor for The Christian Chronicle, speaks on faith and politics during a Norton Colloquium panel discussion at Harding University in Searcy, Ark.

He balked at the political upheaval in Springfield, Ohio, sparked by rumors that immigrants there were eating cats and dogs. Amid all of the outrage on both sides of the political aisle, “Why is no Christian saying, ‘My goodness! Our neighbors are so desperate and hungry, we need to feed them’? Jesus says, ‘If there really are people eating (pets), my people need to go feed them.’

“Why is no Christian saying, ‘My goodness! Our neighbors are so desperate and hungry, we need to feed them’? Jesus says, ‘If there really are people eating (pets), my people need to go feed them.’”

“I don’t care where the power ends up, and I don’t care who wins the issue. If the church would stand up and do that, we’d make a difference,” Beller said, “But if we keep parroting Fox News and MSNBC and CNN, we’re no different.”

Beller, who preaches for the Wilshire Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, has heard people tell him, “I knew you were a Democrat!” and “I knew you were a Republican!” — sometimes in response to the same sermon.

“We need to be equal opportunity offenders,” he said. “Neither party represents the Kingdom of God.”

Guy, who serves as executive director of the David E. Smith Healthcare Ethics and Human Dignity Initiative at Harding in addition to his ministry duties, gave an example from Greek mythology — something I didn’t expect from a preacher.

In “The Odyssey,” as Ulysses travels home from the Trojan War, he must pass by the island of the sirens — beautiful women whose song lures sailors to their demise. He and his crew plug their ears with wax, but as Ulysses witnesses the sirens’ beauty, he desires to hear their song, so he unplugs his ears. In another ancient Greek story, the legendary musician Orpheus overcomes the sirens’ song by playing something even more beautiful on his harp.

“Every election season is ugly,” Guy said, “and I think we can offer something different if we say something beautiful.”

Carl Royster speaks about the Church Research Council initiative.

Our first Norton Colloquium class was “The Present and Future of Churches of Christ.” I moderated a discussion with Carl Royster of 21st Century Christian and Stan Granberg of Heritage21 about the new collaboration of our three ministries — the Church Research Council. In the months to come we’ll be surveying congregations in the U.S. on a number of metrics that we prayerfully hope will give us an accurate picture of our fellowship in the post-pandemic world. We want to hear from every U.S. congregation, even house churches. Please visit crc-coc.org to learn more about the survey.

In our final session, “Modern-day Josephs (and Josephines)” I shared my favorite “what you intended for evil God intended for good” stories from more than two decades of reporting on Ukraine. Bobby Ross and Audrey Jackson, our managing editor, shared the stories that inspired them.

Sawmi Sektak speaks about her journey from India to The Christian Chronicle.

We also heard from our special projects manager, Sawmi Sektak, who is in her second year with the Chronicle. She shared about her childhood growing up in Angels’ Place, a children’s home in northeast India, and the long journey of faith that led her to Ohio Valley University, Oklahoma Christian University (where she earned a master’s in business administration) and to our Chronicle family.

I’m so thankful to Harding President Mike Williams and the lectureship team of Monte Cox, David Swindle and Meagan Justus for allowing us to be a part of Inspire. We’re planning to return to Harding next year to do another session of the Norton Colloquium.

Participants including Laurie Diles, Harding professor and daughter of Howard Norton, listen and take notes during the Norton Colloquium.

We’re also developing plans to present the colloquium at Pepperdine and Abilene Christian universities next year. I’m hoping to do a condensed version of the program for congregations in our fellowship. If your church is interested in hosting a session to help us honor the legacy of Howard Norton, please let me know.

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

The Hendersonville Church of Christ, about 25 miles south of Asheville, witnessed the twin consequences of Helene, with some members isolated in a devastated mountain community and others organizing the generous donations that poured into the slowly recovering town.

Hendersonville songleader Glenn Elliott lives with his family in Bat Cave, a community about 20 miles into the mountains from the church building. The hurricane caught Elliott and his neighbors unawares.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has reported seven storm-related fatalities in Henderson County, where both Hendersonville and Bat Cave are located. Of the 95 storm-related deaths statewide, 42 were in Asheville’s Buncombe County, the agency said.

“We didn’t take any special precautions,” Elliott said, explaining that if hurricanes turn toward the mountains, they’re usually little more than a “normal thunderstorm” when they arrive.

“There was some wind, and … it was enough to raise your eyebrow and be like, ‘All right, maybe this is a little bit more than what we’re used to. Maybe it won’t be that bad,’” Elliott recalled. 

Hendersonville Church of Christ songleader Glenn Elliott steps down from the equipment he used to dig out after Hurricane Helene.

A photo of the Elliott family hangs in the family’s home in Bat Cave.

He heard trees break. Were they near the house? Over the hill? 

The family awoke Sept. 27 to darkness. But losing power that Friday was nothing new in the mountains.

Elliott’s wife, Samantha, remembered the relative calm. In the still, dark house, it was just another chance to “snuggle” and “cuddle” with the kids, she thought.

“Whenever the rain started to come, there was just this wall of rain, very thick … winds gusting,” Elliott added. He saw that two limbs had pierced the top of a camper parked down the hill.

Elliott decided to move his wife’s car. Then came the first landslide, which he saw not with his own eyes but in the surprise in Samantha’s. Standing on the porch, she pointed behind him, the “dull roar” of the rain and the music Glenn was listening to muffling the danger.  

With Elliott wearing flip-flops and his 16-year-old daughter Elaina barefoot, the pair climbed into a “side-by-side” — a utility vehicle — to check on neighbors. 

“We started making our way across the mud in the … new river that we had,” he remembered. 

The neighbors were OK.

Then, a crashing sound. 

“I looked up the hill,” Elliott said, “and here came a second landslide. … Probably 10 seconds after we got out of the way, it came where we were.” 

“I looked up the hill, and here came a second landslide. … Probably 10 seconds after we got out of the way, it came where we were.” 

The second slide carried more debris.

“I’ve never seen a boulder float until this event — trees that were well over a hundred years old, 3-foot diameter or better, 60 feet long, just snap like toothpicks,” he said. The torrent of floating fragments of Appalachia flowed “wherever it wanted to go.

“All that water has to go somewhere. … And one drop turns into two, and two turns into a cup, cup into a gallon, gallon into a landslide.”

Hurricane Helene’s torrential rains and subsequent landslides leave gaping holes in mountain roads, isolating rural communities such as Bat Cave, home of Hendersonville songleader Glenn Elliott.

A wrecked building sits in mud left after Hurricane Helene flooding in the town of Swannanoa near Asheville.

Debris can be seen along a western North Carolina roadway after Hurricane Helene.

Signs of grace

Elliott remarked on the contrast with the normally calm hills he’s always loved.

“Some mornings you get up, and you just smell the … fresh air. You see the fog coming up … in the valley. … You have creatures around you that you can watch with joy,” he said. “God’s got the best paintbrush, way better than anything we have.”

He saw signs of grace in the people who came together to help after the storm.

“God is good because I can tell you the outpour of help that we have seen from people we don’t know, people from other states, other areas, that dropped what they were doing to come help us,” Elliott said.

With the community isolated and without power, the Bat Cave Volunteer Fire Department became a gathering point.

The fire department served breakfast and dinner. Community members charged their phones. Bat Cave residents worshiped together in a fire engine bay the second Sunday after the rain.

Hendersonville also lost power. The Sunday before Elliott worshiped with neighbors in Bat Cave, 28 people assembled in the Hendersonville church lobby, said Ashley Brown, wife of Ethan Brown, the minister.

Worshipers spontaneously called out hymns, the service illuminated by the lobby’s tall windows. “It was a very poignant gathering,” the minister said.

“This area is not used to severe storms of any type. … We just usually get wind and rain, aftereffects of the storm hitting the coast,” said Hendersonville elder Bill McKelvey. “When the storm hit here, we were quick to say, ‘OK, we gotta do something.'”

Songleader Glenn Elliott at his home in Bat Cave, a community about 20 miles into the mountains from the Hendersonville Church of Christ.

An ‘overwhelming’ response

The church announced it would serve as a distribution point and got in touch with Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort, a national ministry based in Nashville, Tenn. 

Then congregations from across the nation began reaching out. 

“They began calling or just showing up with a truckload of goods,” McKelvey said.

“The number of people that just said, ‘We are bringing stuff,’ has been overwhelming,” minister Brown emphasized.

In addition to supplies, the Hendersonville church has received financial donations totalling about $80,000 so far, McKelvey said.

With food, pallets of bottled water, cleaning supplies, generators and heaters showing up, the congregation converted its fellowship annex into a warehouse.

Supplies streaming in, the Hendersonville church converts its fellowship annex into a hurricane relief warehouse.

Some of the food items given away by the Hendersonville church after Hurricane Helene.

Baby supplies for hurricane victims are shown at a Baptist church in western North Carolina after the storm.

The church had begun a disaster relief ministry about two years ago, explained Hendersonville member David Yelton, who proposed the idea. Yelton was planning to go to Florida to help with relief when the hurricane wreaked havoc at home.

After conditions improved in Hendersonville, the church scheduled a distribution program from noon until 6 p.m. for several days.

Members organized a system of stations that offered various points of personal contact without anyone getting out of the car.

“It was a full drive-through service,” Ashley Brown said. Drivers first talked to greeters, who completed an inventory of needed food and supplies. 

The Hendersonville congregation offers drive-through relief distribution at its building following the hurricane. Volunteers assessed needs, provided supplies, and offered prayer with visitors never having to leave their cars.

Then, “runners” carried the inventories to “shoppers” in the annex-turned-warehouse.

Ashley wanted those seeking help to feel genuinely welcome. “I tried to treat them like … they’d walked in the front door of the church building on a Sunday.”

Visitors drove to a final post where they could talk to licensed counselors from the congregation or request prayer. Organizers made tweaks to improve the system.

“I’ve never seen a more oiled machine,” said Yelton, whose father, Don, a longtime disaster relief organizer, is a fellow Hendersonville member. “The best thing I can do is stay out of the way,” he recalled thinking.

In his family’s home in the community of Bat Cave, Glenn Elliott embraces fellow Hendersonville church member David Yelton, active in the congregation’s disaster relief ministry. Elliott’s home was spared serious damage by nearby landslides.

Glenn Elliott and David Yelton talk about the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

‘It was a way I could help’

Relief workers at the Hendersonville church said that 238 cars went through the distribution line.

A cooking team sent by Disaster Assistance CoC in Lake Jackson, Texas, prepared 1,778 hot meals. The menu included potato soup, spaghetti, meatloaf, mashed potatoes and red beans and rice. Some of the meals went to Bat Cave.

While serving the wider community, Hendersonville members also checked on each other.

With cell service still poor in Hendersonville, Rhea Carter and Kylie Cochran worked to establish contact with fellow church members. 

“We split up the directory. … I would just text and just see if they were OK,” Carter said, achieving a 75 percent response rate to her queries.

Carter kept notes on her phone, then messaged the information to Cochran on Facebook. Members’ needs were relayed to David Yelton, McKelvey and minister Brown.

“I was one of the only ones with cell phone service,” said Carter, who lives in Inman, S.C., about 35 miles away. “It was a way I could help.”

Three generations of a Hendersonville church family work together in the congregation’s annex-turned-warehouse to provide hurricane relief: Nancy McKelvey, wife of elder Bill McKelvey; Gillian Thompson, the McKelveys’ granddaughter; and Ashley McKelvey Brown, Thompson’s mother, the McKelveys’ daughter and wife of minister Ethan Brown.

God is good, even in a disaster

Hendersonville members looked at the hurricane and its aftermath through the lens of faith.

“The event that happened is nothing that’s in anyone’s control but God’s. It’s not our choice,” Elliott said.

“Despite who survived or who did not survive, God is still good. And whether it be in the realization of what we have or used to have, we learned, we adapt,” he added. “If it had not been for our faith, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Despite who survived or who did not survive, God is still good. And whether it be in the realization of what we have or used to have, we learned, we adapt.”

“We have a better connection with our neighbors,” Elliott added. “Where was that before?”

Yelton connected people’s material and spiritual needs during the disaster.

“Our job is to help them, and then while we’re helping them, if we can feed their souls, if we can teach them the Gospel, that’s what we want to do,” he said. 

“They’re asking questions,” Yelton said. “If I can save one person’s life, not just their physical life but their spiritual life, and I can bring them to God, then it was worth everything I did.”

Hendersonville minister Brown sees God’s loving pursuit of humankind even in disaster.

Brown based his sermon on a recent Sunday on Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000.

Hendersonville Church of Christ minister Ethan Brown speaks to the congregation two Sundays after Hurricane Helene downed trees in the town and ravaged nearby mountain communities. Brown compared the inadequacy felt by Jesus’ disciples during the feeding of the 5,000 to the challenge for the congregation of assisting in post-Helene relief and recovery.

While creation was flawless, God “allowed chaos to come back in, so that we would be discontent and seek after him,” the preacher told the congregation.

The minister saw in the disciples’ loaves and fishes a reflection of the church’s own feelings of inadequacy as it faces the daunting tasks of relief and recovery. 

“I don’t know that anybody, like any human person, is adequate to what’s happened out there,” he said.

Hendersonville church members pray before partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

“Give it to me. And I will give it to them through you,” Jesus told his disciples before they fed the crowd. 

Brown applied the lesson to Hendersonville: “If you’re doing ministry with Jesus, Jesus does ministry through you. Blessed people bless people.

“My prayer is that God will give us mouths to feed, that we can put this stuff into the hands of people that need it when other people have forgotten them. … God doesn’t forget them, and I don’t want to forget them either.”

The auditorium dark, Hendersonville Christians gather in their church building’s lobby the Sunday after Hurricane Helene brings flooding, downed trees, and power outages to the area.

TED PARKS is a correspondent for The Christian Chronicle. Based in Nashville, Tenn., he traveled to western North Carolina to report this story. A contributor to the Chronicle since the 1990s, he teaches Spanish at Lipscomb University. To offer feedback on this story, contact letters@christianchronicle.org.

Leaders replaced that banner with one telling neighbors, “You’re VALUABLE! Made in the image of God.”

The Detroit-area congregation has not wavered in its opposition to abortion.

But the suburban church, which previously confronted pregnant women outside abortion clinics, has changed its method.

“Abortion is still the murder of an innocent person,” senior minister and elder Donald T. Eason said from the pulpit on a recent Sunday. 

A new banner at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich., touts the value of every person to God.

“However, the Bible says that knowledge puffs up, but love edifies,” he added, referring to 1 Corinthians 8:1. “So we want to be loving in our approach to help save innocent life. Amen?”

“Amen!” the congregation responded.

The church’s Embrace Grace ministry — part of a national network of support groups — provides practical, spiritual and emotional care for single mothers. 

“We have to take care of all of God’s children, every human being that comes out of the womb,” Eason told The Christian Chronicle. “So we have a different approach, trying to be kinder, nicer.”

That approach connected Metro members — including Phyllis Eason, the minister’s wife and leader of Embrace Grace — with Brooklyn Covington, who learned about the ministry via social media.

From the archive: Picket signs, honking horns and sidewalk sermons: Inside an anti-abortion ministry

“I don’t know what I’d do without my baby and, like, all the support that I got from here,” Covington, 24, said of the church. 

“It was a really hard pregnancy — not, like, physically, but mentally — and it was really nice coming here every week,” added the single mother, whose son, Bronx, is nearly four months old. “It was just, like, a good feeling.”

Sue O’Bryan, an Embrace Grace volunteer, greets Brooklyn Covington and her baby, Bronx, at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich. Also pictured is Metro elder Doug Edwards.

U.S. abortion trends

The Chronicle previously featured the Metro church’s anti-abortion emphasis in a front-page story in 2021, highlighting members’ sidewalk protests and use of bullhorns to urge women entering abortion clinics not to end their pregnancies.

The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

Since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, more than a dozen states have banned abortion. Others have placed new restrictions on it. 

But the practice remains legal in a majority of states, including Michigan. 

The nation’s overall number of abortions has risen — topping 1 million in 2023. That’s the highest level in more than a decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. 

In the 2024 presidential race, Democrat Kamala Harris supports the protections of Roe v. Wade, while Republican Donald Trump favors deciding the abortion question on a state-by-state basis. Earlier this month, Trump said for the first time he would veto a federal abortion ban. 

Sixty-three percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

From the archive: Two adoptions, two differing views: Christian women reflect on their experiences

But a majority of women who seek abortions would prefer to continue the pregnancy — “if they had more emotional support or financial security,” said Tessa Cox, senior research associate for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which opposes abortion.

“So there’s an enormous amount of room for progress and the work of pregnancy centers — the work of the pro-life movement — to reach out and be the support that so many of these women are looking for,” Cox said earlier this year on the Chronicle’s podcast. 

“So many of them, if there had been someone there that could offer them that real support,” she added, “they could have been encouraged to make a better decision and to choose life.”

A turning point

The year was 1987.

Phyllis was 20. Donald was 22.

The future minister’s wife was a Christian. The future minister was not.

She became pregnant, and the unmarried couple found themselves at a crossroads. 

Thirty-seven years ago, that was the Easons’ story.

Before they married, Donald and Phyllis Eason experienced an unplanned pregnancy. He’s now a minister, and she leads the Embrace Grace ministry at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich.

Within a few months, the couple exchanged wedding vows. Phyllis’ father taught Donald the Gospel, and he was baptized. 

And Phyllis gave birth to daughter Kirby, the oldest of their three children. Now 36 and married, Kirby has three daughters of her own — the Easons’ grandbabies.

Decades have passed, but memories of their own experience remain vivid for the Easons.

“I did have a family that I could turn to,” Phyllis said, “but that’s not always the case for other young women.

“Women are sometimes ostracized in the church,” she stressed. “They don’t even feel comfortable coming to the church if they have a pregnancy outside of marriage.”

Phyllis Eason, wife of minister Donald T. Eason, sings at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich. Beside her is Embrace Grace graduate Brooklyn Covington, with her baby, Bronx.

Reasons for the change

Two factors inspired the Metro church’s new approach to fighting abortion.

Donald and Phyllis Eason’s arrival at the congregation three years ago was one.

The other was the arrests and prosecutions of seven anti-abortion activists accused of blockading an abortion clinic in Sterling Heights, a city of 130,000 about 20 miles north of Detroit. 

“They’re being persecuted,” said Shannon Filipiak, one of the founders of Metro’s original sidewalk ministry. The other founder no longer attends Metro.

Shannon Filipiak, a member of the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich., holds a “Babies are murdered here” sign while picketing a Flint, Mich., clinic in 2021.

None of the charged activists is connected with Metro, but their convictions got church members’ attention.

“Our approach to pro-life has changed by design and also for safety’s sake,” said Doug Edwards, an elder of the congregation, which averages Sunday attendance of about 170.

Embrace Grace’s program involves regular Bible study and personal encouragement.

“When babies are born, the local congregation gives a shower with lots of gifts and continues to work with these young mothers,” Edwards said. “Our preacher is asked to speak at the Bible studies to offer some direction. The ultimate goal is to get them involved attending the local church, but that takes time.”

“When babies are born, the local congregation gives a shower with lots of gifts and continues to work with these young mothers.”

God’s sense of humor

Through Embrace Grace, single mothers attend a 12-week program at Metro during their pregnancy.

The ministry started with two pregnant women last year.

Both gave birth to sets of twins.

Wendy Burcham volunteers with the Embrace Grace ministry at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich.

“We were thinking, ‘God has a sense of humor,’” ministry volunteer and retired nurse Wendy Burcham said of the sudden influx of babies.

Three single mothers, including Covington, participated in the next group.

And a third group has launched. One of those women gave birth to premature twins. The entire church is praying for them.

Embrace Grace’s volunteers include Sue O’Bryan, a 74-year-old Metro member. A licensed professional counselor, she was raised by a single mother and then became a single mother herself.

“As a single parent, it is very hard fitting into a church family,” O’Bryan said of her motivation, “because everything is precipitated on God’s plan for a husband and a wife and children.

“Jesus is the groom, the church is his bride, we’re all his family,” she added, “and we’ve got to be more inclusive.”

Church member Tara Winters, 33, coordinates social media marketing for Embrace Grace.

She has a background in interior design. That experience comes in handy in planning the baby showers.

“So I’m able to kind of use that knowledge and all that schooling to help be a blessing here,” said Winters, who is married and has a 5-year-old son.

The Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich., stands to sing.

‘Conscience of the state’

Metro members pray that Embrace Grace can help reduce the number of abortions.

Despite Roe v. Wade’s demise, the number of abortions in Michigan increased again last year — including thousands of pregnant women who came from other states for the procedure, according to a government report.

“It’s no longer the law of the land,” Donald Eason said of legalized abortion. “However, it’s moved into the different states to fight this.”

Donald points to a quote from the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.”

“So we have a responsibility as a church community to be a conscience to the country,” said Donald, who has participated in the national March for Life in Washington, D.C.

Donald T. Eason, right, makes an announcement at the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich.

“The Bible says that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach,” he added, citing Proverbs 14:34.

Protecting the lives of the unborn, the Easons believe, starts with caring for vulnerable mothers.

Women with unplanned pregnancies need to know, Phyllis said, “that God still loves them — and that we love them and want to be of support.”

Brooklyn Covington, 24, feeds her baby, Bronx, during an interview with The Christian Chronicle. 

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

Embrace Grace

For information on starting an Embrace Grace support group, visit embracegrace.com/start-a-group.

Less than three weeks later, the church got a call from the Tennessee group asking if the congregation needed help after Hurricane Milton.

Milton, at one time a Category 5 hurricane, made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, south of Tampa.

The 70-member Midway church, which meets on the opposite side of the Florida peninsula, experienced “a lot less rain than we anticipated, but a lot of wind” as Milton passed by on its way into the Atlantic, said church secretary Peggy Engeler.

Midway members remember what it meant for the organization to show up two decades ago after back-to-back Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne besieged the area.

“That was pretty devastating for our community in 2004, and they brought two tractor-trailers and set up in our parking lot and passed out food, diapers, MREs (Meals Ready to Eat),” elder Robert (R.A.) Hawley said. “We always remembered that organization in Tennessee.”

Ken Lowry, associate director of the Nashville-based nonprofit, said the Fort Pierce congregation hasn’t requested a truck after the latest hurricane, but the organization is ready to respond if they need one.

As the wind and rain from Milton began to subside, Florida churches got to work.

Here’s how some congregations responded:

Midway Road Church of Christ, Fort Pierce

Fort Pierce’s damage was caused by seven tornadoes that destroyed more than 150 homes and caused four fatalities.

Before the storm hit, Hawley said, “We put shutters up for some of the widows, made sure their homes were secure, and if they needed fuel for generators, they had it.”

“We’re actually going to clean up one of the member’s neighbor’s homes. A lot of their property is in a neighbor’s yard.”

Several members’ homes were damaged by tornadoes. “We’re actually going to clean up one of the member’s neighbor’s homes,” Hawley explained. “A lot of their property is in a neighbor’s yard.”

Another member lives in the Spanish Lakes neighborhood, where six were killed and tornadoes destroyed several homes.

“It was in his community,” Hawley said. “He heard the destruction.”

Port Charlotte Church of Christ

Bryan Winn, minister for the Port Charlotte Church of Christ, midway between Sarasota and Fort Myers on Florida’s Gulf Coast, said the church was fortunate to have no damage to its building and only a brief power outage.

“For the most part, we were very blessed,” Winn said.

Several members still have no electricity, and a few had flooding, but the congregation has come together to help with clean up.

“It’s very sporadic where damage occurred and didn’t occur,” he said.

“The disaster areas are in places where normally there wouldn’t be any. And in some places where you’d expect it, there’s not any.”

Beverly Dobbs

“We’ve worked with Ken Lowry in the past,” he said of the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort official. “But when I spoke to him last week, I explained to him essentially that the volunteers would be better suited in the Venice area or in Tampa or Sarasota.”

Beverly Dobbs, ministry assistant with One Kingdom, a relief ministry based in West Monroe, La., received a similar response from the Gulf Coast Church of Christ in Fort Myers, where she and her husband helped two years ago after Hurricane Ian.

“They said, ‘We don’t need you right now.’” After recovering from Ian, they knew other communities had greater needs, Dobbs said.

Creekside Church of Christ, Brandon 

Keegan Wilson is connections minister for Creekside Church of Christ in Brandon, just 16 miles east of Tampa.

The native Australian said all the congregation’s members were in the hurricane’s path. Several had trees come through their houses or were flooded, but no one was injured.

“We’ve been focusing more on the community around us,” Wilson said.

Many congregations in the Tampa Bay area lost electricity for a longer time than Creekside, which proved fortunate because the worst of the disaster in the area happened two days after Milton when Lithia, a community less than a mile south of Creekside on the Alafia River, flooded.

Reports of the river’s crest range from 23 to 25 feet. Flood stage is 13 feet.

“No one expected this massive flood in Lithia, and we woke up and realized there was trouble,” Wilson said.

Many residents in the area kept farm animals. When Wilson got in a boat and began paddling through the community, “I saw a lot of animals floating — a lot of animals stranded. No one knew it would be that high.”

Because Creekside is so close, it became a staging area.

“We had the sheriff’s office, Coast Guard, National Guard. We had helicopters landing at church,” Wilson said in the Aussie accent that sets him apart from fellow Floridians.

“We had the sheriff’s office, Coast Guard, National Guard. We had helicopters landing at church. … We want to make this a Christ-centered facility where we can evangelize.”

Wilson’s role at the church is one of his two jobs — his other is buying and selling private jets, which he calls a side gig — a side gig that has helped him make connections with people who were in a position to help financially.

He said the congregation wants to be a hub for the community; that’s been part of its plan all along: “We want to make this a Christ-centered facility where we can evangelize.”

An image of Hurricane Milton approaching Florida.

One of Creekside’s buildings is H5 rated for hurricanes but had not yet been readied to serve in disaster relief.

“I got to speak to our sheriff, and we are going to set up to support their workers and linemen,” Wilson said.

“We went through $30,000 to $35,000 of supplies in two days. People from church just stepped up and helped. We had no idea what we were doing, but we figured it out,” he said.

“We went through $30,000 to $35,000 of supplies in two days. People from church just stepped up and helped. We had no idea what we were doing, but we figured it out.”

Sorrento Hills Church of Christ, Sorrento

The Sorrento Hills congregation, about 30 miles northwest of Orlando, has grown to about 70 members since it began in 2020 after meeting in homes for about four years. Children make up more than a third of that number.

The minister was on vacation when Milton arrived, so Byron Chapman, the treasurer, wound up helping to organize the relief response.

“We had minimal damage to the property,” Chapman said, “just a lot of branches and power lines down.”

Power at the church was back up by Saturday night, but throughout the community, bigger trees took down power lines, and sinkholes appeared.

Chapman’s wife, Vanessa, is the church secretary.

“We’ve been steadily growing and are thankful that — out of the bad event that happened to our community — we were able to use it for good and to glorify God, thanks to the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort,” she said.

Members of the Sorrento Hills Church of Christ sport Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort T-shirts as they distribute supplies to their community.

Some contacts Byron Chapman had made through Polishing the Pulpit had told him about the organization prior to the storm’s arrival.

“The storm hit Wednesday night, and they were able to get a truck here within 36 hours, which is phenomenal,” he said. “It got here at 4 a.m. Saturday morning, and we were able to get some people down the street to bring a forklift to us at 6 a.m.

“We ended up doing a disaster relief effort on Saturday. After six hours we had depleted all the materials,” Byron Chapman said. “We had about 275 cars that came through and more folks came walking.”

Members of the Sorrento Hills Church of Christ in Florida stand in front of a Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort supply trailer.

About 30 Sorrento Hills members showed up to help. Another 15 to 18 volunteers from two churches in Jacksonville, including the youth group from the Lake Forest Church of Christ in Jacksonville, arrived and cleaned up properties for neighborhood elderly and single moms.

“We are always looking for evangelistic outreach opportunities in our Sorrento community,” Vanessa said, “and this was a very big one.”

53rd Ave. Church of Christ, Bradenton 

Despite similar names, the Churches of Christ Disaster Response Team from Tipp City, Ohio, and the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort from Nashville function in different but essential ways.

The 53rd Avenue Church of Christ in Bradenton has received trailers from both.

Laura Cremeans, director of the Ohio ministry, said her organization is still set up at the Forrest Park Church of Christ in Valdosta, Georgia, helping with Helene relief. But they’ve sent a trailer to Bradenton and are still looking for other areas in Florida that need help. Her teams typically arrive with a mobile shower trailer, stocked tool trailers, health kits, clean-up kits, baby kits, school kits and trained coordinators.

The Nashville ministry sends supplies to be distributed by Churches of Christ in disaster areas.

Lowry said their 53-foot semis are loaded with 24 pallets — 75,000 to 80,000 pounds of supplies including prepacked food boxes that feed a family of four for five days.

“The last thing that goes in each box is a New Testament and handwritten note,” Lowry said.

Members of the 53rd Ave. Church of Christ unload boxes from a Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort truck.

They also send boxes with personal care items, infant care boxes, a cleanup kit in a 5-gallon bucket prepacked with batteries, flashlights, masks and cleaning supplies. And they send bulk items — pallets of bleach, bottled water, spray cleanser, wheelbarrows, rakes, shovels, mops, blooms, hose, tarps, box fans, bed linens and clothing — all brand new.

Randy Blankinship, an elder at 53rd Avenue, is grateful for all of it.

He’s been coordinating the relief effort “by default,” he said. But he’s quick to give credit to the church members who have pitched in. “We’ve got a lot of people involved – it has turned into a well-orchestrated process so far.”

“(Bradenton) took a sideswipe from Helene. Milton was a direct hit. The eye of the storm went right across our area, including the church building and my house and most of our members’ homes.”

Blankinship has been at the 150-member congregation for 18 years.

He explained that Bradenton “took a sideswipe from Helene. Milton was a direct hit. The eye of the storm went right across our area, including the church building and my house and most of our members’ homes.”

The church itself had only minor damage. Power was lost to the main building and a food pantry structure that has become relief headquarters. An old garage on the property collapsed, and much of the old growth live oaks and pine trees were shredded.

Blankinship said most effects from Milton were from high winds and fallen trees that caused structural damage.

“Power outages have been problematic because they’ve been ongoing — we still have members without power,” he said. He praised the utility companies and contracting companies for the work they’ve done — but the number affected is significant, “so we’re still watching out for them. Some have generators, and some don’t, so we try to get generators to them or a supply of fuel.”

Fuel shortage has been a persistent and complicating problem. Gas stations are out of fuel or don’t have power to pump it. A few trucks have made it to the area, but lines stretch up to a half mile. The Port of Manatee, just north of Bradenton, reopened Monday and has a fuel dock. He hopes that helps.

A distribution of goods from Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort was planned for Wednesday, and he hoped there would be another later in the week. Volunteers have been solicited from nearby congregations to help.

He complimented the relief groups for their attentiveness and efficiency.

Despite the destruction, congregations have found blessings in the muck.

One Kingdom’s Dobbs summed it up.

“They’ve all rallied. It’s what churches are supposed to do.”

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

Helene, which made landfall Sept. 26 in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane, left a wide swath of destruction from storm surge, wind, landslides and flooding through Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia. A week later, the death toll stood at 227, with an unknown number still missing or unaccounted for, The Associated Press reported.

Two weeks later, Milton landed south of the Tampa Bay area as a Category 3 hurricane late Oct. 9, bringing tornadoes and flooding — though storm surges were not as severe as predicted. AP has reported at least four deaths and more than 3 million without power. Early Thursday morning,  tropical storm and storm surge warnings were still in effect as weakened Milton moved into the Atlantic.

Storm damage in Keaton Beach, Fla., after the landfall of Hurricane Helene.

Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort, based in Nashville, Tenn., was working to deliver food, water and personal care items through the Cedar Key Church of Christ and Lake City Church of Christ in Florida, the Lakeland Church of Christ in Georgia,  Forrest Park Church of Christ in Valdosta, Ga., the Central Church of Christ in Augusta, Ga., and Elizabethton Church of Christ in Tennessee.

Additional truckloads were being sent to churches in Live Oak and Cross City, Fla.; Quitman and Savannah, Ga.; Newport and Erwin, Tenn.; Sylva, Hendersonville, Asheville, West Jefferson, Rutherfordton and Boone, N.C.; and Abingdon Virginia.

Volunteers packed food boxes for several days at the disaster relief organizations warehouse on 410 Allied Drive in Nashville.

Several churches in North and South Carolina requested supplies be held while they lack the means for storage and distribution amid continued power and communication outages, CCDRE said in a Facebook post.

Virginia National Guard soldiers provide emergency response around Abingdon, Va., after Helene.

The area around the Tri-Cities School of Preaching and Christian Development — hosted at the Stoney Creek Church of Christ in Elizabethton, about 2 hours northeast of Knoxville — suffered severe wind damage. There was some water damage to the school itself, director Bill Haywood told The Christian Chronicle.

The nearby towns “are very bad,” Haywood said, with severe flooding in Elizabethton, Hampton, Roan Mountain and Erwin, as well as Damascus in Virginia. The Tri-Cities school dismissed classes for the week so students could help in the community, including shoveling mud, removing debris and delivering water, he added.

Churches of Christ Disaster Response Team, based in Tipp City, Ohio, was also working with the Forrest Park church and the Newsome Street Church of Christ in Hahira, Ga.

The organization shared photos and video on social media of its team of volunteers cutting and removing fallen trees in Valdosta.

The team requested additional volunteers and disaster relief coordinators who could commit to spending several weeks onsite.

Disaster Assistance CoC, based in Lake Jackson, Texas, set up its mobile headquarters serving meals in a Walmart parking lot in Perry, Fla., before moving into Augusta, Ga., at the Central Church of Christ, and then Weaverville, N.C.

It was working with other teams and partners to feed residents of Cedar Key and Punta Gorda, Fla.; Hendersonville, N.C., in conjunction with the Hendersonville Church of Christ; and Quitman, Ga.

Workers with Disaster Assistance CoC give out food at a Walmart in Augusta, Ga., after Hurricane Helene.

The organization reported giving out hundreds of meals per day at each location — and as many as 1,600 in Weaverville.

President Mike Baumgartner told the Chronicle it’s the most widespread relief effort he’s coordinated in 19 years.

Volunteers prepare a large vat of jambalaya to distribute in Weaverville, N.C., after Hurricane Helene.

“I’ve never helped in as many different locations in different states all at the same time,” he said. “It’s just crazy the way this one came through and (has) done so much damage in so many areas. But we’re trying to get meals out to them.”

Baumgartner said his team was also making efforts to bring meals to those in harder-to-reach areas who may not be able to reach public relief centers.

Project Unify: Churches of Christ Evangelistic Disaster Relief, based in Trinity, Ala., also has a team working with the Central church in Augusta, clearing debris, providing power with generators and conducting Bible studies in the area, and requested generators, chainsaws, financial support and prayers.

“If we need to stop doing what we’re doing and drop everything to lead a study, that’s the reason we’re here … so we can open a door so that we can teach the Gospel,” co-director Cody Michael said in a Facebook video. “Sometimes Satan keeps our blinders on us for so long, and then at moments when there’s storms and trauma, sometimes those blinders for a moment get taken off and we can se clearly.”

One Kingdom, a ministry of the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La., was working with churches in Swannanoa and Hendersonville, N.C., to serve food and deliver supplies from the White’s Ferry Road church.

The organization was accepting donations through Oct. 21 of basic supplies including diapers, blankets, canned food and first aid kits to deliver to those areas. The full list can be found at www.onekingdom.org.

The South Gate Church of Christ in Columbia, Tenn., sent a disaster response team to Newport, Tenn., with 1,600 meals and was accepting donations for additional support.

The Cortez Church of Christ in Florida was raising money for building repairs through a GoFundMe titled “Property repairs Cortez Church of Christ.”

The church building had a foot of standing water inside after Helene, minister Kevin Hall wrote on the fundraising page, and the congregation couldn’t afford flood insurance.

That fishing village near Tampa was hit by another storm surge from Hurricane Milton.

The Boone Church of Christ in North Carolina, near the campus of Appalachian State University, was accepting monetary donations to minister to its community.

In a Facebook post, the 70-member congregation said it was able to to deliver generators and water to all its members, as well as some neighbors and family, in addition to tree and brush removal.

“There are no words to describe the damage,” minister Jason Moon added. “Wind is powerful, but water is even stronger! But nothing compares to the power of the love of God’s people who want to help others.”

Florida College in Temple Terrace, just outside Tampa, dismissed its classes Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 9 and 10, ahead of Hurricane Milton’s arrival.

This post is being updated. If you have information about disaster relief in your area, email calvin@christianchronicle.org.

October is “Pastor Appreciation Month,” which puts us in a double bind. We’ve spent lots of time defending our use of the term “preacher” while reserving “pastor” for those who meet a particular qualifications (Acts 20:17, 28; 1 Peter 5:1-2).

Every year around the Super Bowl, someone forwards me the meme saying, “You should be as excited about church as you are about the Super Bowl. So when your pastor makes a really good point this Sunday, pour Gatorade over his head.” I proudly remind them that we use “pastor” in reference to “elders,” and I gladly offer to help fill the coolers.

Yet we must admit that all faithful ministers serve some function of protecting, feeding and mending the “flock.” Some call this “shepherding” or “pastoring.” Jesus, though unmarried and childless, was called the “Chief Shepherd” (1 Peter 5:4).

Related: Hear from Mike Cope on the state of preachers and preaching in Churches of Christ in Episode 24 of The Christian Chronicle Podcast.

Rather than quibble over titles and terms for now, we are better served by truly appreciating those who shepherd — in any way — the church of God. Their work is not easy. Research consistently shows high levels of depression, loneliness and burnout among church leaders. They are people, too, with their own struggles.

They sit in hospitals beside families waiting and praying for healing. They worry for our kids, just as we do. They mourn the passing of members even while searching to comfort the congregation. They wrestle with Scripture, trying to discern God’s will for all those hot-button issues. And they desperately fight to “maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace” in the midst of strong personalities, cultural pressures and political tensions threatening to divide God’s people.

The difference is, they do not have the luxury of simply processing these things quietly and in private.

Sammie Berry presents the Living Legend Award to James O. Maxwell in Dallas earlier this year. Maxwell, a longtime minister and administrator at Southwestern Christian College, was honored at a citywide lectureship.

James warned, “Not many of you should become teachers … for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (3:1). And the author of Hebrews said leaders “will give an account” (13:17). With varying gifts, training and abilities, these leaders accept the call to “watch over our souls.” Some do it as their primary vocation. Others do so voluntarily, with the same level of commitment and accountability.

We don’t know who officially declared this “Pastor Appreciation” month (though I suspect Hallmark or Mardel has a hand in it). But Scripture is clear: “Pay honor to whom honor is due” (Romans 13:7). If anyone is deserving, surely it is our leaders: pastors, preachers, deacons, teachers, God’s ministers of every descriptive title and task.

“Scripture is clear: ‘Pay honor to whom honor is due’ (Romans 13:7). If anyone is deserving, surely it is our leaders: pastors, preachers, deacons, teachers, God’s ministers of every descriptive title and task.”

Buy them a card. Take them to lunch. Give them a gift. Better yet, pray for them continually that their work might be done with joy.

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” (Isaiah 52:7).

Forty-five students — 27 women and 18 men — from 19 U.S. states and Mexico will train for eight months before scattering to mission points around the world.

As the two-year Adventures in Missions program — known as AIM — begins, participants get instruction on stewardship, security procedures, personal hygiene and respectful treatment of the Sunset Church of Christ members who house them.

For nearly a decade, another topic — one often avoided by Christians — has gained prominent attention at AIM’s annual orientation.

Sexual trauma.

Pat Sheaffer serves as advancement coordinator for Sunset International Bible Institute’s Adventures in Missions program.

“They’re going to be real,” Pat Sheaffer, AIM’s advancement coordinator, tells students as he introduces the guest speakers, Steve and Holly Holladay. “They’re not going to put on any masks.”

The Holladays, founders of a ministry called Ultimate Escape, recount their own journey — Steve’s escape from sexual addiction, Holly’s healing from teenage sexual assault — before delving into healthy relationships, sexual identity and how God wired the brain for marital sex and bonding.

“Our students really come to trust and believe Steve and Holly … because they share their personal back stories,” said Sheaffer, who first came to AIM as a student in 1988 and then served three years in Lisbon, Portugal. “Just this element of vulnerability really lays the groundwork for wanting to trust and learn from them.

“It’s just a blessing,” the AIM leader told The Christian Chronicle. “Their vulnerability allows other people to learn of God’s healing, of God’s grace and also of God’s intention for their lives.”

Steve and Holly met and fell in love at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., in 1990 and later worked in youth ministry.

The couple started Ultimate Escape 20 years ago with a focus on helping adolescents address addictive sexual behaviors. The ministry’s launch coincided with the rise of easily accessible pornography — via the internet and later smartphones.

Steve speaks from experience. He first endured sexual abuse as a preschooler. He faced it again at age 16 — with a youth minister as the perpetrator. As an adult, he developed a pornography addiction. He credits God and a faith-based treatment program with helping him overcome it.

He later earned a master’s degree in counseling and completed additional clinical training in sex therapy. Sadly, many of the clients he sees cite abuse by ministers and other church leaders.

Steve Holladay, founder of the Ultimate Escape ministry, speaks to Adventures in Missions students at Sunset International Bible Institute.

Holly speaks from experience, too. In her high school years, she survived a three-year sexually abusive relationship with an older boyfriend. For a long time, she blamed herself — not understanding the trauma she suffered.

A registered nurse, she is studying to become a nurse practitioner.

The Holladays attend the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood, Tenn.

In recent years, Ultimate Escape’s emphasis has expanded to serve Christians of all ages.

“We want to equip people to address sexuality in a healthy way. That’s our main mission right there,” Steve said in an interview at the couple’s Dickson, Tenn., home.

“But at this point in our culture,” he added, “I don’t know how in the world to do that without addressing sexual trauma, because so many people have experienced the hurtful side of sexuality and need the healing to be in a good spot.”

Steve and Holly Holladay pose for an Easter photo at the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ, their home congregation in Brentwood, Tenn.

Secret trauma

Illustrating the point, Steve wrote in his ministry’s newsletter about the couple’s interactions at last year’s AIM training:

“During a break, one guy approaches me and describes what a friend did to him at age eight. He says he never told anyone about it. I congratulate him on his courage to give his secret a voice.

“A girl tells Holly about an experience; the girl had been forced into a sexual encounter by a guy. He threatened her by saying, ‘If you don’t, I know where you live and I know you have a (preschool age) sister.’ The girl wonders if the encounter was her fault because she did not say ‘no’ after she was threatened. It breaks my heart to hear that a young girl feels like that situation was her fault. But this weekend she discovers it was not her fault. I believe others experience similar realizations about their own experiences.”

About 1 in every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, according to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.

The same is true for about 1 in every 33 men.

But RAINN — which stands for “Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network” — notes that sexual violence “is notoriously difficult to measure, and there is no single source of data that provides a complete picture of the crime.”

Stats from RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, provide an overview of the problem.

In an age of porn, exposure to sexually explicit images and content — purposely or not — is widespread, often at an early age.

As Steve and Holly explain to the AIM students, sexual trauma can result from nonconsensual sexual contact, forced exposure to sexual content and unwelcome sexual comments or gestures.

“It’s certainly not anything new. I think it’s something we’re more aware of,” Steve told the Chronicle. “Internet porn, social media, sexting, phone cameras — all of that has just ramped up the electronic side of sexual trauma.”

Pat Sheaffer, advancement coordinator for Sunset International Bible Institute’s Adventures in Missions program, prays for Steve and Holly Holladay before their presentation.

A proactive approach

Since its 1973 founding, AIM has enrolled more than 2,300 students and sent helpers to more than 200 mission points in the U.S. and around the world.

The program’s short-term missionaries have served in 31 states and 49 countries.

Truitt Adair, Sunset’s chancellor and former longtime president, first introduced Ultimate Escape to AIM.

At the time, AIM leaders noticed that a rising number of students had experienced some form of sexual trauma, said Cory Burns, the program’s director.

“AIMers would come to us and build a rapport. They’d build trust,” Burns said. “And then we’re months into their time with AIM, and they’re like, ‘Hey, I just wanted to talk to you about something that happened to me when I was 15 years old.’”

Often, AIM leaders would need to ask the student — deep into their missionary training — to take a break and focus on their long-term health.

“AIMers would come to us and build a rapport. They’d build trust. And then we’re months into their time with AIM, and they’re like, ‘Hey, I just wanted to talk to you about something that happened to me when I was 15 years old.’”

Nine years ago, Sunset decided to take a more proactive approach and address the issue directly.

“We intentionally bring Steve and Holly within the first two weeks of AIM starting so that students can hear the material but also get resources that are available,” said Burns, who first came to Sunset as an AIM student in 1996 and served in Moscow, Russia, before a decade as a missionary in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Those resources include a counselor in Lubbock.

“We just saw instantly a positive change of what we were facing with our students,” Burns said of Ultimate Escape’s role. “I just love that the students have a safe environment to talk … (and) be preventative in some areas where Satan tries to get a foothold in people’s lives.”

Like Sunset, Great Cities Missions — a Texas-based church-planting organization active in Latin America — has developed a long-term partnership with Ultimate Escape.

“Though often overlooked, missionaries struggle with the exact same issues and temptations as any other Christians do,” said Scott Reynolds, Great Cities’ associate director and a former missionary to Brazil.

“Though often overlooked, missionaries struggle with the exact same issues and temptations as any other Christians do.” 

“At the same time, they are amongst those who have the least resources for support, counsel and help,” Reynolds added. “Tragically, over the years, many have fallen prey to Satan’s traps in the area of sexuality and intimacy.”

Steve leads regular group sessions and offers one-on-one counseling at Connections, Great Cities’ renewal retreat in São Paulo. The men’s event, conducted every other year, draws missionaries from throughout Central and South America.

Reynolds praises Ultimate Escape’s focus on healthy sexuality.

“Not just internationally but in our own context in the U.S., I would say this is a subject we don’t address enough or with honesty or with the type of attention that it needs,” said Reynolds, who serves as an elder of the Shawnee Trail Church of Christ in Frisco, north of Dallas.

Steve Holladay speaks about God’s vision for sexuality during Connections, a missionary renewal retreat in Brazil organized by Great Cities Missions.

Hope and healing

Ultimate Escape changed Tara Wallace’s life.

Married for 26 years, Wallace is a nurse, a mother of four and a faithful Christian.

But she couldn’t pinpoint the reason for her depression until she heard Steve and Holly speak several years ago at the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La.

“I was in my late 30s at that point, and I just didn’t understand it — what was going on with my marriage and in my mind and in my heart,” said Wallace, now 45. “I knew I loved Jesus, and he was everything to me, but something was still not quite right. And when I heard Steve and Holly’s story that night, I just kind of broke down.”

“I knew I loved Jesus, and he was everything to me, but something was still not quite right. And when I heard Steve and Holly’s story that night, I just kind of broke down.”

Wallace said she was molested as a child. She carried the burden of that trauma throughout her adult life, even if she did not realize it. Through counseling sessions with Steve, she found healing.

“He helped me work through my trauma and my pain that I honestly didn’t know was still there,” she said. “I’m forever thankful for Ultimate Escape and everything that Steve and Holly were able to do for me.”

The Holladays — Steve, Holly and daughter Savannah Bloomer — share the family’s story at the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood, Tenn.

‘It needs to be talked about’

Back at Sunset, AIM students Nathan Odle, Daniel Roland and Adria Estabrook gathered in Sheaffer’s office to reflect on the Holladays’ two-day presentation.

All three emphasized the relevance of the subject matter to their age group and Christians in general.

“I think it is one of the most swept-under-the-rug topics in our society and culture today, so I think it needs to be talked about more than it is,” said Odle, 18. “So I really, really appreciate what they’re doing.”

Nathan Odle is an Adventures in Missions student from Idaho Falls, Idaho.

He came to Sunset from Idaho, where he attended the Idaho Falls Church of Christ.

His parents, Jonathan and Jaime, met in the AIM program. His brother, Caleb, 20, is an AIM graduate now studying preaching at Sunset.

“I know people that have been sexually abused,” Odle said, “and I know people that have gone on from that, not gotten the help they needed, and have gone on to either commit suicide or to live horrible lives away from Christ. So for me, this is something that’s so important, and we don’t talk about it.”

Roland, 18, echoed Odle.

Roland said he grew up thinking sex was bad because all the talk he heard about it was negative.

He welcomed the Holladays’ clear teaching on God’s vision for sexuality.

Daniel Roland is an Adventures in Missions student from Midland, Texas.

“It’s like, it is a good thing, especially when it’s within the boundaries,” said Roland, who was born in Lubbock and adopted at age 3. “But when Satan gets a foothold, like how it is today, it gets corrupted.”

As a child, Roland moved to Midland, Texas, where he attended the One Hope Church of Christ. His parents, Jeff and Karen, serve as missionaries in Ghana.

Given the prevalence of sexual trauma, AIM participants need to know how to confront it and show love and support to victims, Roland said.

Estabrook, 17, said she appreciated the juxtaposition of the world’s view of sex as “the nasty” with God’s vision of sex as an intimate relationship between a married couple, mirroring Christ’s sacred bond with the church.

Estabrook grew up in the Sacramento, Calif., area, where she attended the Lincoln Church of Christ. Her parents, Josh and Victoria, met at a Wendy’s restaurant in Lubbock during her mother’s time as an AIM student.

“I cried at least six times hearing the stories,” Estabrook said of the Holladays’ real-life anecdotes.

“It’s so frequent in our society,” she said of exposure to sexually explicit material. “There’s no little child who, by the age of 13, won’t have at least seen something sexual at least once or twice, right? Like, it is so prevalent in everything, especially in today’s world.”

Adria Estabrook is an Adventures in Missions student from the Sacramento, Calif., area.

What God intended for sex

A passion to educate fellow Christians about sex drives the Holladays, who have seen Ultimate Escape morph and mature over the past two decades.

“As I have gotten older and moved from being the parent of young children to a grandparent, I think that allows me to speak to things from a different vantage point,” Steve said. “Also, the more I got the chance to speak at churches and get feedback and hear story after story, the more I realized that there is a huge need.”

That need has as much to do with a healthy understanding of sexuality, he stressed, as it does dealing with problematic sexual behavior.

Like Steve, Holly grew up in a Christian family.

“We were always at church. We were committed believers,” she said. “But the only thing I ever heard was that sex outside marriage was wrong: ‘Don’t ever do it.’ That was it.”

“We were always at church. We were committed believers. But the only thing I ever heard was that sex outside marriage was wrong: ‘Don’t ever do it.’ That was it.”

Christians must be much more open about the subject, the Holladays believe.

That’s why Ultimate Escape exists.

Over 20 years, the ministry has connected with believers in 26 states and nine countries.

“It’s about an overall understanding,” Steve said, “of what God intended when he created sex.”

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to Texas and Tennessee to report this story. He first wrote about the Holladays for the Chronicle in 2006. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.

On March 13, 1977, I made my way to the front of the church and asked to be baptized. I was 9 years old.  

I don’t recall the exact invitation song that Sunday. It might have been “Trust and Obey.” Or maybe “There’s a Fountain Free.” Those are two of my favorites. 

But I do remember that the preacher, Wendell Jackson, emphasized the need to give our lives to the Lord. He warned of spending an eternity in hell. He outlined the steps of salvation.

By that time in my young life, I had heard hundreds of sermons and never responded to the gospel message. But this one pricked my heart. And I did — much to the surprise of my parents.

By that time in my young life, I had heard hundreds of sermons and never responded to the gospel message. But this one pricked my heart.

Nearly half a century later, I was reminded of my experience when I received a note from Douglas A. Foster, professor emeritus of church history at Abilene Christian University in Texas.

Foster told me about a discussion of “the invitation” that came up during a church small-group meeting.

“Some were expressing the sense that there has been something extremely valuable lost by not having a traditional invitation following the sermon,” Foster wrote. “Here at Northside in San Antonio there is an announcement made at the end of the service before the final song that if anyone would like prayer, they can find one of the elders or prayer ministry team members then for any needs they might have, but no specific mention is made concerning baptism, ‘restoration,’ etc.”

Foster wondered if I knew of any data concerning what percentage of Churches of Christ still offer a traditional invitation.

I did not, but the topic fascinated me. With Foster’s permission, I sought feedback from my email list.

“Thank you for sharing Douglas Foster’s letter,” replied Phil Sanders, speaker for the national TV ministry “In Search of the Lord’s Way.” “I was in Texas (on a recent Sunday) and experienced the same thing. An announcement of elders and a prayer group for anyone with a need was given, but nothing was said about what to do to be saved or restored.

“And we wonder why our churches are not growing!” Sanders added. “We … have forgotten how to persuade people to come to Jesus.”

But K. Rex Butts, lead minister for the Newark Church of Christ in Delaware, said he only offers an invitation when it fits directly with his sermon.

Often, he’ll simply end with a blessing based on 2 Corinthians 13:13: “May the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the love of our God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all!”

“When an invitation is offered at the end of every sermon,” Butts said, “it risks losing its significance because it’s just something that the preacher says every time.”

Some churches have embraced “Baptism Sundays,” choosing a specific Lord’s Day to encourage seekers to make the decision.

“They lead up to it with classes on baptism, etc.,” noted Steve Cloer, who directs Harding University’s Center for Church and City Engagement in Memphis, Tenn.

A woman becomes emotional after responding to the invitation at the Greater Metropolitan Church of Christ in Kansas City, Mo.

Making the invitation a priority

The Jenkins Institute, which offers support and encouragement for preachers, did a survey on the topic. Nearly 200 ministers responded, according to Dale Jenkins, the institute’s co-founder:

• 67.7 percent said they “spend time each week tailoring my close to fit the lesson and audience.”
• 29.7 percent said they “have a standard invitation.”
• 2.6 percent said they “do not close with an invitation.”

Clyde Slimp, a Texas-based regional director for Eastern European Mission, known as EEM, said he has visited 50-plus churches in four states in the last four years.

“If memory serves, 85 percent offered a traditional invitation,” Slimp estimated. 

Indeed, most ministers who responded to my query fall into that category.

“I always make it a priority to offer an invitation,” said Richard Combs, minister for the Main Street Church of Christ in Walnut Ridge, Ark. “I feel like an invitation to either obey the Gospel in baptism or be restored — or just for someone needing prayers or support from fellow brethren — is important.”

Sammie Berry, minister and elder of the Dallas West Church of Christ, deems the invitation “an important and powerful part of the message.”

“When I preach, I am delivering the divine message and sharing points of application,” said the Texas preacher, who serves on The Christian Chronicle’s national board of trustees. “I am talking to the Body about the transformative power of Jesus. I think we shortchange the Body when we don’t give them an opportunity to respond in a public way (like on Pentecost, Acts 2 and in Samaria, Acts 8).”

Minister Sammie Berry preaches at the Dallas West Church of Christ.

Randy Clay, preaching minister for the Cross Tower Church of Christ in Salt Lake City, said he “more often than not extends an invitation. We are very close to averaging a baptism every week! Just baptized a couple in their late 70s who were lifetime Mormons!”

At the Avondale Church of Christ in Birmingham, Ala., those who preach specify the steps of salvation at the end of every sermon, elder Carter Ross Jr. said.

Ross likes to exhort the church between verses of the invitation song, be it “Just As I Am” or “Lord, I’m Coming Home.”

“The question continues to be asked: ‘What must I do to be saved,’” Ross said. “The lost still need to know: ‘How do I become a Christian.’”

“The question continues to be asked: ‘What must I do to be saved.’ The lost still need to know: ‘How do I become a Christian.’”

Jim Dillinger, minister for the Rochester Church of Christ in Indiana, said his regular invitation focuses as much on encouragement as repentance.

“When someone comes forward, we have groups of people who come with them and surround them during the invitation song,” Dillinger said. “They never sit alone in the ‘sinner’s box.’ When we pray for them, I will share their need to the church, and then one of the elders kneels and lays hands on them while he prays for that need.

“Afterwards, members line up to hug and encourage them,” he added. “Sending someone off to a back room defeats the purpose of the church ‘to encourage one another and even more so as the day of the Lord draws near’ (Hebrews 10:25).”

The Heritage Church of Christ in Franklin, Tenn., stands to sing the invitation song.

History of the invitation

The earliest invitation, it would seem, occurred in Acts 2:38. 

That is, of course, where Peter told the people, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The earliest invitation is recorded in Acts 2:38.

The modern invitation in Churches of Christ can be traced back roughly two centuries, according to “The Invitation: A Historical Survey.” Restoration Quarterly published that seminal article by the late Thomas Olbricht in 1961.

“According to Olbricht, the custom of offering a public invitation during the worship service was already prevalent throughout Restoration Movement churches by 1832, when the Christians associated with Barton W. Stone united with those aligned with Alexander Campbell,” said John Young, a Restoration Movement scholar at Amridge University in Montgomery, Ala.

“The practice originated in an era of widespread religious revivals as a way to bring some semblance of order back to the assembly when massive crowds wanted to respond to the Gospel,” Young explained. “However, the specific purpose of the invitation changed as leaders in the Restoration Movement came to a consensus regarding the necessity of believer’s baptism. 

“Whereas the public invitation had been offered in other church traditions as a chance for hearers to experience an inward conversion or movement of the Holy Spirit, Restoration Movement churches invited those present to come forward and receive baptism,” the theology professor added. “In both cases, it was thought that the presence of the crowd would help bring about the proper response from the individual.”

“Whereas the public invitation had been offered in other church traditions as a chance for hearers to experience an inward conversion or movement of the Holy Spirit, Restoration Movement churches invited those present to come forward and receive baptism.”

A tradition or a doctrine?

Some ministers voiced concern that the invitation is a tradition that has become — in the eyes of many — a doctrine.

Chris McCurley, preaching minister for the Walnut Street Church of Christ in Dickson, Tenn., said he sees benefits to the invitation — but also potential harm.

“I don’t feel it is wise to urge someone to make such a monumental decision in the heat of the moment, so to speak,” McCurley said. “Anyone contemplating discipleship should consider the cost; that’s what Jesus expressed to potential followers. Baptism is the starting point for discipleship, not the end point. Therefore, I do not want someone making the decision to put on Christ in baptism without knowing precisely what they are getting into.”

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

Too many come forward, are baptized — and then walk out the church door never to be seen again, McCurley said.

“If nothing else, we need to have solid conversations with those who come forward and perhaps even study further rather than rushing them into the baptistery,” he said. “There is also the aspect of having someone walk down the aisle, which is quite intimidating to many.”

Charlie Harrison, minister for the Brunswick Church of Christ in Maine, shared a similar perspective.

Harrison recalled out-of-town visitors from Tennessee who chastised him one Sunday. 

His sin, in their view: Even though his message referenced faith, repentance, confession and baptism, he did not include “the traditional mini-sermon at the end of the sermon.”

“I might ask: When and how are most people converted?” Harrison said. “Does it come from one proceeding to the ‘mourners’ bench’ at the end of a worship service when the call is made?”

Mark Adams, minister for the Tusculum Church of Christ in Nashville, Tenn., said he offers a weekly invitation. 

But he’s intentional about saying that it’s a tradition.

“Both the preacher and a couple of elders will receive people at the front,” Adams said. “Instead of only the option of coming down front, which they are welcome to do, we also have a QR code that links to a response form they can fill out online, and we note that there are a couple of elders available in a separate room if they need to have a more confidential conversation and time of prayer.”

Church members embrace those who respond to the invitation at the Greater Metropolitan Church of Christ in Kansas City, Mo.

Baptism in a bathtub

That Sunday in 1977 when I stepped forward, I was not taken immediately to the baptistery.

In fact, our little church in North Carolina — near the Virginia state line — did not have a baptismal pool. My family was part of a team of domestic missionaries that had turned an old nightclub, painted all black when we arrived, into a small meeting place.

Mom and Dad, both teary eyed, joined me up front and hugged me. We spent time that afternoon reviewing the Scriptures and making sure I understood the choice I was making.

Then we headed to the lake. I stepped into the freezing water to wash away my sins. But the bitter chill proved too much. 

I have wondered from time to time if that meant I wasn’t ready, but I knew enough to understand the plan of salvation and my need for Jesus.

We drove home, and Dad baptized me in our bathtub.

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

What’s going on here? As a friend said in an email: “No church member would teach or tolerate from their children the actions, attitudes, language, derision, hypocrisy, dishonesty or hate displayed by both political parties, in varying ways and different levels and locations. What are any of us defending or pushing?”

How should Christians react to what is going on? What is the correct relationship of faith to politics? I do not know how to frame an adequate answer to such a complex problem in our emotionally supercharged environment. But here are a few suggestions that seem relevant.

First, biblical faith is inherently political in nature. One who claims to love God shows the claim to be a lie by failing to love a brother or sister in need (1 John 4:19-21). But loving others requires some degree of concern for the sociopolitical arena in which we all live.

Racial justice, sexual ethics, poverty, child welfare, ecology, gun violence, health care — these political issues are also spiritual concerns because they call for value-based decisions.

Conner Westerby, right, pickets a Michigan clinic, joined by fellow Christians Laura Sawyer and Shannon Filipiak.

Second, biblical faith must not be prostituted to the institutions of power, nationalism or partisan politics. Church and state must remain separate, for the church’s role in the state is to be its conscience.

Identified with the state or a partisan group, it cannot fill that role. It will wind up defending the indefensible and substituting a national flag for the cross of Christ. The sorry religion Karl Marx dubbed the “opiate of the masses” was a church used to prop up the rich and powerful. True religion is always God’s voice for the weak (James 1:27).

Third, Christians must avoid the false dichotomies of secular versus spiritual, justice versus mercy. God still requires this of his people: “To do what is right, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

So should we preach repentance or work to feed hungry people? Yes! Absolutely, yes! There is no credibility for the person who wants to evangelize others without regard to their poverty, addictions or injustices being foisted upon them. Disciples of Jesus address both these issues – as our leader did in his ministry (Acts 10:38).

Members of the Washington, D.C.-area Springfield Church of Christ in Virginia hold signs declaring “Black Lives Matter” and touting justice, love and mercy. After George Floyd’s death, the church decided to “stand for the oppressed,” member Kathy Bailey Holland said.

Fourth, God’s people simply do not have the luxury of washing our hands and being unconcerned about the larger political landscape. Since both justice and mercy are connected to the people and policies of government, we dare not be insular and altogether disengaged with civic issues.

Local and state elections are often more crucial than presidential contests. Support, vote for and hold accountable persons you think can best advance the common good.

Fifth, remember that a Christian’s dual citizenship is to be taken seriously. All the kingdoms of planet Earth are under the judgment of God. Whenever there is a conflict of loyalties between your earthly and heavenly citizenship, there can be no question as to which takes precedence.

As Election Day 2024 comes near, pray for God to bless our people in the choice of leaders at all levels of government. Pray for our historic system of checks and balances in this country to function well.

Whether the candidate you support is elected or that candidate’s opponent carries the day, pray for “all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

Finally, on the morning of Nov. 6, 2024, get out of bed, go about your day’s duty, do everything in that day to the glory of God, and be thankful that we aren’t due to have another presidential election for four years.

RUBEL SHELLY is the teaching minister for the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood, Tenn., a former president of Rochester Christian University and the author of several theology books.

Then again, it’s not trying to be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growth and decline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reinvesting resources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accommodating culture?

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

Such innovations depart from Scriptural teachings, those leaders believe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then again, it’s not trying to be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growth and decline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reinvesting resources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Innovative or unscriptural?

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

Such innovations depart from Scriptural teachings, those leaders believe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A minister’s ‘getaway’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Producing gospel preachers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We need students’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why choose a preaching school?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, the precious memories.

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

Amen, Dad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heed that lesson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because Christ’s love compels us.

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

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

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