A multi-year study hosted by the University of Maryland and including several area groups concludes that faith-based organizations can better weather an economic downturn by building stronger ties with the ministries the congregations that support them.

From a release issued on Thursday:

Particularly during an economic downturn, faith-based organizations tied only to one or two congregations, especially if those were not thriving congregations, had the most trouble raising resources and some shut down. While single-congregation support of a program might be considered more authentic, faith-based organizations supported by a wider umbrella or an interfaith base fared better.

“We compared everything from small food pantries directly connected to a congregation to national hospital systems and their local affiliated hospitals,” said Maryland Associate Professor Jo Anne Schneider, who led the project. “Congregation-focused models work well for mainline Protestants, Quakers and African American churches, but only if several congregations provide support or the sponsoring congregation is sufficiently active with enough resources to support the nonprofit. Jewish and Catholic systems rely on their communities as a whole with the Jewish Federation, Archdiocese, or Order providing centralized support. Some thriving evangelical organizations rely on networks with no formal connections to congregations.”

Other key findings of the report, entitled “Faith and Organization Project: Maintaining Vital Between Faith Communities and their Organizations:”

* A new breed of evangelical organizations has emerged with a different understanding about how to develop an organization to do a specific mission that is firmly based in a particular set of beliefs but that focuses on personal relationships to provide services rather than sharing their faith as a means to improve the lives of those served.

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The National Association of Evangelicals is urging Congress to approve reforms to immigration laws, the Associated Press is reporting.

The NAE, seen as representing younger and more politically moderate faith leaders, ignited a controversy within the Evangelical community a couple of years back when its chief lobbyist said it would endorse a statement calling for action on climate change.

Now the group, which represents 40 Christian denominations, passed a resolution Thursday recommending changes to the law that would help undocumented immigrants eventually gain legal status.

The resolution was passed unanimously by the group's board of directors, which called on lawmakers to place a high priority on reuniting families. Association president Leith Anderson said the process for legal immigration to the U.S. is antiquated, bureaucratic and needs to change.

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

For all the agonizing people do over theoretical ethical quandaries, few of us are likely often to find ourselves in genuine ethical dilemmas. Sure, we find ourselves in dilemmas, but our choice is usually between doing the right (but difficult, painful and/or costly) thing and taking a seemingly easier way out. Many of the dilemmas we encounter are self-inflicted: a husband looks at pornography and then must decide between confessing it to his wife (thus making her feel violated) or not (thus hiding something from her). We’re in a bad spot, but we put ourselves there, and we have ourselves to blame for having to lie in the bed we made.

The truly wrenching dilemmas, though, are the ones that are brought upon us by others. You see the neighbor kid smoking dope: Do you tell her parents? A coworker speaks abusively to you in a meeting: Do you object? A preacher delivers a sermon you know was cribbed from somebody else’s: Do you blow the whistle? In every case there are uncomfortable practical implications to either choice, and you’re aware that whatever path you choose will have negative consequences for you personally, but you have to choose. Even if you want very much to do the right thing, even if you work hard to keep your own interests from coloring your decision, it’s not easy. Beyond the harm inflicted by the bad behavior itself is the moral burden placed on those in a position to respond to it.

And sometimes you don’t have much time to make a choice. The adrenaline is flowing, the atmosphere is charged, the play is to you and you’ve got to make the call. This seems to have been the case for John Pontolillo, the Johns Hopkins student who encountered Donald Rice in his yard in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

That Mr. Rice was guilty at the very least of trespassing is beyond question; that he was preparing to commit more serious crimes is beyond doubt. “Even burglars,” the Sun editorialized today, “don’t deserve to be killed with a razor-sharp sword.” No, of course not; burglary is not a crime that merits the death penalty in civilized societies. (And in the uncivilized ones I’d still prefer a sharp sword to a dull one, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Continue reading "Guest post: Facing a dilemma, sword in hand" »

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Amid scenes of rancor between politicians and voters at public forums on health care reform in Maryland and nationwide, one local Evangelical congregation is planning a town hall meeting of its own.

Organizers say the session Thursday at Grace Fellowship Church in Timonium will focus on the question of "how to navigate the health-care proposals as a Christ-follower." From the church Web site:

With all the "noise" out there about health care, it's hard to know how to respond.

We'll talk about the issue from a different perspective: How to navigate the health-care proposals as a Christ-follower.

This is not a politically driven agenda, and instead will be a conversation navigated by Danny O'Brien. Danny has years of experience in the health care industry.

Bring your concerns and thoughts, and we'll all talk about this issue in a constructive manner. See you there!

The session is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday at the church at 9505 Deereco Road. More information, from an e-mail promoting the event, after the jump:

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There are many things Evangelical Christians are good at, such as bake sales and talking to me on planes. They're less adept at other things, such as comedy and fighting lions. … So when Kevin Roose, author of the excellent new book The Unlikely Disciple, told me that Rick Warren's giant Saddleback Church has its own improv group, for the first time in my life, I felt my calling. I may not be the Woody Allen or Jon Stewart of the secular world, but in the land of the unfunny Christian, the one-joked Jew is king.

After performing with the five-member troupe (Here is what goes through your mind during 90 minutes of Christian improv: "No, no, can't say that, nope, maybe if ... no."), Stein asks Saddleback's director of creative arts the point of hosting a comedy show, or the church’s jazz and Shakespeare festivals.

"If you look back in history, most of the arts were done for the church,” Tony Guerrero tells Stein. “All the music of Bach and Mozart was written for the church. We'd like it to be a hub for the arts again."

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There was a coffeehouse vibe in the basement of a Bolton Hill brownstone where 20 or so men and women gathered on a recent evening.

Mostly in their 20s and 30s, they had hugged hello as they filed into the brightly painted former architecture studio. They had poured the free-trade French roast and unpacked the cupcakes. They had broken into small groups for an icebreaker - name the three people you would take to a desert island - and laughed when it turned out that several had come up with MacGyver, the resourceful secret agent from the 1980s television show.

Finally, it was time for Joel Kurz to get to the point.

"We're asking you to join us in planting a church," the 28-year-old pastor of the Garden Community said. "We're asking you to reconcile Baltimore to God's kingdom."

One of more than a dozen such startups in the area, the Garden Community is at the vanguard of a push by the Southern Baptist Convention into Baltimore, targeted as a "strategic focus city" by its North American Mission Board. Eleven churches have begun to hold worship services here in the last two years, two others are set to open in September, and organizers see as many as half a dozen more forming by the end of the year.

The new congregations are as varied as the neighborhoods in which they've settled. New Hope Community Church, which meets in a Curtis Bay recreation center flanked by bars on all four corners, serves breakfast before Sunday services and sends worshipers home with sandwiches afterward. The Light Church in Mount Vernon boasts a coffeehouse and art gallery. The Gallery Church in Charles Village holds a Saturday discussion group in an Irish bar.

The effort comes as the nation's largest Protestant body struggles to reverse a historic decline in membership. If current trends hold, President Johnny Hunt warned members at the annual convention last month, its numbers could fall from the current 16.2 million to 8.7 million by 2050.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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In an appearanced criticized by some of his fellow conservative Christians, megachurch Pastor Rick Warren told several thousand American Muslims over the weekend that "the two largest faiths on the planet" must work together to combat stereotypes and solve global problems, the Associated Press is reporting.

"Some problems are so big you have to team tackle them," Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, told the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. He said Muslims and Christians should be partners in working to end what he calls "the five global giants" of war, poverty, corruption, disease and illiteracy.

The Christian Post quoted Warren, the founder of Saddelback Church in Orange County, Calif., as saying he was "not interested in interfaith dialogue.

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Categories: Christianity, Evangelicalsm, Interfaith, Islam
        

Ginger Kolbaba has a message for Jon and Kate Gosselin: “Please don’t do what you’re doing.”

“For too long I’ve watched Christian couples live self-centered lives, pursuing their own desires, talking about following Christ and the principles of our faith, but not actually living them out,” writes Kolbaba, who edits Today’s Christian Woman and Marriage Partnership.

“When life gets difficult — as it does for every couple — they throw in the towel, acting helpless, showing to the world that when the apostle Paul said, ‘We are more than conquerors through Christ,’ he didn’t actually mean it.

“For too long I’ve watched Christians show to those outside our faith that Christianity, in fact, doesn’t strengthen us or make us any different from people who don’t follow Jesus. Instead I hear couples say, ‘The kids will be better off to have calm. It’s not good for them to see us arguing. Everything will be just fine. We’re doing this for the kids. It’s all for the good of the kids.’

“It’s rubbish. Kate (and Jon), who’s in control of the peace and calm of the kids? You are. You have the responsibility to bring calm into your family. But the good news is that God brings the grace and power to help you do that, through his Word, through prayer, through the community of believers, and through good old-fashioned determination.”

The Gosselins, the Christian family at the center of the TLC show Jon and Kate Plus Eight, announced plans this week to divorce after 10 years of marriage. Kolbaba is one of several Evangelicals taking a personal interest in their marriage.

Continue reading "Evangelical concern for Jon and Kate" »

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Largely drowned out by the tabloid coverage of the Gosselin family, an interesting and thoughtful discussion is going on among Christians about the spiritual challenges facing the stars of the TLC reality show Jon and Kate Plus Eight. For those who haven’t followed the series, it focuses on the lives of a Pennsylvania family raising a set of twins and a set of sextuplets – lives that have grown more complex in recent months amid rumors of marital infidelity by both of the parents.

Members of an Assemblies of God church, the Gosselins have been embraced by Evangelicals, who have celebrated, for example, their decision to carry all of their sextuplets to term.

Lynn Roush, a blogger at Christianity Today, and Diana Butler Bass, a contributor to beliefnet, assessed the apparent state of the Gosselins’ marriage as depicted in the fifth-season premiere of the show last week and came to different conclusions.

Roush, a counselor at Evangelical Presbyterian church in Columbia, Mo., sees the answer in “the intervening grace of God’s Word and his redemptive work in our lives,” which she describes as usually found only “in relationships with other believers who have access to our hearts to help us see where God’s truth interacts with our daily lives.”

“I’m only guessing here, but it seems that Jon and Kate’s marriage is a reflection of where each is spiritually,” Roush writes. “Perhaps they have dropped church out of their busy schedules, and with that, a group of other Christians who knows them, is aware of their struggles, and helps to keep them accountable?”

But Butler Bass, an author and teacher writing for beliefnet’s Progressive Revival blog, sees the church as part of the problem.

“Evangelical gender expectations seem to be the root of their troubles: they reversed the parental roles,” she writes. “After a couple of seasons, Jon decided to stay at home and Kate went on the road to promote the show and their books. The choice made Jon increasingly sullen and Kate happier and began to wear at their relationship."

Continue reading "Jon and Kate plus the Evangelicals" »

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We noted last week that if she is confirmed by the Senate, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will become the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court. Martin E. Marty, the great historian of religion at the University of Chicago, has seized the opportunity presented by her nomination to search for evidence of a lingering anti-Catholic bias among mainline Protestants and Evangelicals – and come away mostly empty-handed.

“Mainline Protestants turned ‘ecumenical’ two-score years ago, as they and most Catholics became buddies,” Marty writes in Sightings, the regular e-mail dispatch produced by the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago. “Evangelical Protestants, who decades ago called the Pope the Antichrist foretold in the Book of Revelation, now link with his successors on selected social issues which are in contention.”

He does allow as how he’s seen some anti-Catholic invective in the comments sections that follow blog posts about Sotomayor’s nomination – but he is unimpressed.

“What strikes me is how unrepresentative the self-named angry Christians in the string of commentators are, if measured against the wider church bodies and leadership,” he writes. “Some simple, raw, old-fashioned anti-Catholicism is present, but it has to share space with Catholics who argue how Catholic someone has to be to be Catholic, and all the rest.

“At the end, such blogs give us a license to yawn when the Catholic defense people rise to complain and rage about anti-Catholicism. We have instead important things to discuss. One hopes they can be argued amid the noisy and predictable debate this season.”

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Did the Evangelical vote put Kris Allen over the top in the American Idol finale? That’s one of the theories that has emerged in the hours after the surprise ending Wednesday to the pop music competition.

The discussion is premised on the widely held expectation that Adam Lambert, adventurous in both performance and appearance, would win the final vote.

Certainly the falsetto-prone glam rocker left a deeper impression than the humble church singer from Arkansas. Even Allen, a worship leader at New Life Church in Conway, Ark., appeared taken aback by the result; when host Ryan Seacrest called his name, his first words were “Adam deserves this.”

But a legion of Christian voters is saying the right man won. Chief among them: Allen’s pastor at New Life, who has been boasting of a faith-based campaign for Allen.

“Churches go crazy with support!” the Rev. Rick Bezet told Fox News. “Thousands of churches twittering and facebooking! It’s been a blast.”

Fox News and other speculate that Allen got a boost from supporters of Danny Gokey, who was eliminated in the week before the final. Another evangelical Christian, Gokey was worship leader at Faith Builders International Ministries in Milwaukee and Beloit, Wisc., prior to qualifying for American Idol.

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