Page 1747 – Christianity Today (2024)

Style: Sparkly modern pop; compare to The Bird & The Bee, Cat Power, The Shins

Top Tracks: “Time And Time Again,” “So Good to Have a Friend,” “Get It Together”

Listening to this new album by Waterdeep, there’s a sense that Lori and Don Chaffer have spent the year or so since their last release absorbing the sounds coming from modern indie pop artists. Sunshine has an autumnal glow touched with the warm pulse of acoustic guitars that helps buoy the gentle motion of the married couple’s lovely vocals. That said, the album feels more focused on personal triumphs and human relationships than a connection with God. But the Chaffers know that it’s in those small beautiful moments that you often find yourself feeling closer to the Almighty, and that essence shines out even if they don’t call your attention to it.

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Style: Retro-styled pop, folk, and soul; compare to She & Him, Monsters of Folk, Will Oldham

Top tracks: “Clean Slate,” “Pure Joy,” “Watch the Show”

These days, many know M. Ward as one half of She & Him, his duo with actress Zooey Deschanel. And that’s a shame, since Ward has been releasing stellar solo albums for years. This new one has fewer biblical references and epistemological musings than his previous release, but amid a smattering of pretty love songs there’s still plenty to unpack musically and lyrically. Leadoff track “Clean Slate”—a beautiful, folky, fingerpicked number—is a quest for “the truth,” while the title track finds him answering a metaphorical knock on the door to “see what it all is for.” But perhaps his greatest distillation of the human condition comes when Ward says he’s “stuck between what we have done and what we’re gonna do.”

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Sounds like: Pure hip-hop; compare to GRITS, Kanye West, Big K.R.I.T.

Top tracks: “One Sixteen,” “Take Me There,” “Good Thing”

Most Christian hip-hop tends to reflect back what is in the rearview mirror of its secular counterparts rather than attempting to keep up with the time. Full credit then goes to Trip Lee and his trio of production partners (Andy Mineo, KB, and Lecrae). Together, this dream team matches pace with dramatic, soulful backdrops built from scratch (live instrumentation wrapped up with hand-programmed rhythms) rather than cobbled together from existing sources. Their work has had an audible effect on Lee, as well. The 24-year-old rapper makes some of his boldest proclamations to date, calling out his critics, poking holes in his own success, and, as he references on “One Sixteen,” his unwavering pride in the gospel of Christ.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The central character of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid dreams of giving up her life in the sea to find love on dry land. The agony she undergoes exchanging her tail for a fully human form is poignant. It makes one wonder what it would be like to become another sort of thing, something we've desperately wanted to become.

Even before the Fall, human beings longed for dramatic change. In Genesis we see that Eve longed to be like God, to share in his very wisdom and goodness (Gen. 3:5-6). That longing was not the problem, since we see that in Christ, we are destined to "participate in the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). Rather, the problem was that Eve grasped at God's wisdom and goodness instead of waiting and trusting God to fulfill her God-given longing. After the Fall, that longing is now utterly frustrated in human beings. This is one gracious reason God has given us the moral law—to show (a) that it truly is our destiny to live godly lives as outlined in the law, and (b) that it is now impossible to live in accordance with God's law without divine grace.

Thus we find ourselves in a desperate situation. We long to know and experience truth, beauty, and love in perfect fulfillment—the very wisdom and goodness of God. This yearning is what drives human beings relentlessly to create, to write, to ponder, and to love. But history and our everyday experience show we fall so far short of this goal as to lead us to despair; we are, as Paul put it, in a "wretched" situation, destined to live and die in futility (Rom. 7:24).

In the midst of our desperate situation, the gospel announces some startling news: In Christ, God has done that which is necessary for us to be changed, to enjoy the life we were created to enjoy, to participate in his being, to know and experience divine wisdom, beauty, and love—the very things we have longed for all along.

Future articles in this series will examine how one can personally participate in this dramatic transformation. Here I want to examine one crucial event that makes this dramatic transformation possible: the Incarnation.

Many assume that the Crucifixion and Resurrection make our transformation in Christ possible. And of course, there is a great deal of truth in this assumption. But we often think of the Incarnation as the warm-up to the real drama: Jesus needed to become human so he could die for us. What many Christians have forgotten is that our redemption began with the Incarnation.

In the Incarnation, God the Son stoops down to gather up our humanity, becoming one of us so that he may reconcile us to God. He takes up our humanity in addition to his divinity—he unites what makes us human to what makes him divine. As the church father Athanasius puts it in the first chapter of The Incarnation of the Word of God, "He has not assumed a body as proper to his own nature, far from it, for as the Word he is without body." Rather, "He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of his Father, for the salvation of us men." Then he makes the startling claim that God the Son assumed humanity so that we might become divine. Not that we should lose our individual identity in total fusion with the Godhead, but that we can be united with God through Christ.

We often think of the Incarnation as the warm-up to the real drama: Jesus needed to become human so he could die for us. What many Christians have forgotten is that our redemption 'began' with the Incarnation.

Similar thoughts are found in evangelical theology. In his Dissertation Concerning the End for which God Created the World, Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan pastor-theologian, argues that God's desire in salvation is to bring us into increasingly intimate communion with himself. Our glorified life in the world to come will involve drawing ever closer to God in an infinite embrace, yet without being absorbed into God like a drop of water in the ocean. We are to be united with God without being "godded with God," as Edwards puts it.

So how is it that the Incarnation, and not just the Crucifixion and Resurrection, makes this unity possible?

The Image of God

Today, many are asking what makes human beings different. What sets us apart from other creatures? There are many answers to that question. Theological leaders through the centuries have labored long and hard to comprehend human uniqueness. Many of them have focused upon the biblical idea found in Genesis 1:26-27 that we are made in the image of God. According to Scripture, no other creature possesses this divine image. But interestingly, Paul tells us that Christ is himself the image of the invisible God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15), while the author of Hebrews says Jesus is "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being" (Heb. 1:3). He has been made temporarily "lower than the angels" (Heb. 2:9) in order to be crowned with glory and honor on account of his suffering for our salvation.

Much ink has been spilled in trying to understand what bearing the image of God entails. But rather than attempting to isolate some quality that only humans possess, we should begin, like the New Testament, with Christ. For if Christ is the image of the invisible God, then he sheds light on what it means for humans to carry the divine image. This is hardly a new insight. In Against Heresies, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons observed that when "the Word of God became flesh … he both showed forth the image [of God] truly, since he became himself what was his image; and he re-established the similitude after a sure manner, by assimilating man to the invisible Father through means of the visible Word."

In other words, in becoming human, God the Son took up our humanity into God. By becoming human, Christ bridged the divide between God and man, doing so from God's side, by God's initiative—the exact opposite of Eve's, and our, natural grasping inclination. Christ's participation in our humanity, then, enables us to participate in his divinity, through being united to God in Christ.

This is what it means, then, to be made in the divine image—to participate in the life of Jesus Christ, who is both fully human and fully divine. In becoming human, God has taken up our humanity into his own divine life. He has endured the hardships and temptations of earthly life not merely to provide us a moral example, but also to begin renewing and sanctifying our humanity. His Incarnation actually repairs the defaced image of God that results from our sin. As Irenaeus suggests, God remakes us in his image.

Christ's Vicarious Humanity

In this way of thinking, the Incarnation itself is also a vicarious work. Evangelical theology already imagines the Crucifixion in this way: As Christ's work on our behalf, performed by a representative standing in our place to take upon himself the penal consequences of our sin. But now we see that God the Son also acts on our behalf in the very act of taking upon himself human flesh. His work does not come in two parts, becoming human and living a perfect life, and then dying on our behalf. No, his work is one whole. He acts on our behalf and in our stead from the Incarnation onwards—in his birth, life, death, and resurrection.

This is sometimes referred to as Christ's "vicarious humanity," and is often associated with Scottish theologians like John McLeod Campbell in the 19th century and Thomas and James Torrance in the 20th. But as has already been indicated, this doctrine can be found much earlier in the life of the church, especially in the writings of the Fathers.

With the concept of Christ's vicarious humanity comes a related notion: The characteristics of human life become the property of God the Son, while the characteristics of his divine life become the property of his human nature. In other words, God the Son acquires the qualities of a human being in addition to his divine qualities. He is no longer just a divine person. Now he is a divine person with a human nature. His divinity and humanity are not fused together in some mixture of divine and human characteristics, like many heroes of myth and legend. Rather, his two natures are held together in this one complex person.

An admittedly crude illustration comes from cooking. When we add yeast to dough, the yeast and the dough interact and enable the dough to rise. In one sense, the yeast has become doughy, and the dough has become yeasty—they have taken on the properties of one another.

Of course, the illustration is limited. One difference is this: the dough and yeast get lost in one another, so that one soon forgets the parts and only thinks of something new called "bread." But Christ's human attributes—born in Bethlehem to Mary, raised in first-century Jewish culture in the Middle East—do not compromise his divine nature. Nor does he become something new or different in taking on human flesh. His divinity and his humanity remain intact, yet united in one person. So when he walks and talks and preaches and heals the sick, he is acting as a divine-human being, the God-man.

Theologians like John Calvin describe a wonderful exchange between the qualities of the two natures of Christ—one that jeopardizes the integrity of neither. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin puts it like this:

This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of Man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; that, by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that, by taking on our mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that, accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that, receiving our poverty upon himself, he has transferred his wealth to us; that, taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness. (Institutes, 4.17.2)

Several centuries after Calvin, Edwards termed these apparent paradoxes the "admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies." In a sermon titled "The Excellency of Christ," Edwards argues that there is nothing intellectually untoward about ascribing a multitude of differing attributes to Christ. In reality, says Edwards, any misapprehension we might have comes not from any actual incongruities within Christ's nature, but from the inherent limitations of human understanding.

But if Edwards is correct to see in Christ an "admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies," a difficult question arises: Does this mean that his humanity adds to, or improves upon, this package of divine excellence? Does the Incarnation, beyond bringing about our participation in the life of God, add something to God's life as well? Does this "yeast" finally find fulfilment in the dough of humanity?

In becoming human, God has taken up our humanity into his own divine life. He has endured the hardships and temptations of earthly life not merely to provide us a moral example, but also to begin renewing and sanctifying our humanity.

The answer is that it does not, for the simple reason that God is already perfect. One cannot add to perfection. The "addition" of a human nature to the person of Christ does not mean the Son becomes more perfect still. Rather, it is the means by which God makes himself visible to us and shows forth his divine image. So although the Incarnation does not add to God's perfection, it does give us, his creatures, an additional reason to love and delight in him.

Still, Edwards understood that true knowledge of God must go beyond merely looking at God. It must involve acquaintance with God. It is no good thinking we know God from studying books or thinking about him. We might put it like this: Without encountering the admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies laid bare in Christ, fallen humans cannot know and enjoy communion with God any more than someone can know what honey is like by understanding its chemistry but not tasting it.

A Life-Changing Doctrine

In this light, we see that the Incarnation is not a mere prerequisite to the Crucifixion and Resurrection. It is part and parcel of the way in which God has chosen to redeem his people.

By God participating in our humanity, we are now, by faith, enabled to participate in his divinity. We can, after all, enjoy the wisdom and goodness and love of God. This is not something we can gain by grasping for it, as did Eve, but something God has graciously done for us. At the same time, the Incarnation helps us literally see what God is like, and gives us a model to imitate as we "work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling," for God has taken on human nature truly "to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose" (Phil. 2:12-13).

It is difficult, then, to see the doctrine of the Incarnation as anything other than life-affirming and life-changing. To know that God has made us in the image of Christ, and entered into our lives so that we may enter into his, is to know that we are set apart from other creatures to love, enjoy, and serve him forever.

Oliver D. Crisp is professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of several books on the Incarnation.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous articles in Christianity Today's Global Gospel Project include:

A Purpose Driven Cosmos | Jesus Christ embodies the meaning of life, the goal of history, and the pattern of the future. (February 24, 2012)

The Human Prototype | With Jesus, we see what we were created to be. (January 27, 2012)

Learning to Read the Gospel Again | How to address our anxiety about losing the next generation. (December 7, 2011)

Why We Need Jesus | Reason and morality cannot show us a good and gracious God. For that, we need the Incarnation. (December 2, 2011)

Making Disciples Today: Christianity Today's New Global Gospel Project | Introducing the magazine's new five-year teaching venture. (December 2, 2011)

When Cheryl Burke first walked into the dark lobby of Chimborazo Elementary School, where she had just been appointed principal, she noted the distinct smell of urine. Outside, the playground was littered with “40s,” large empty beer bottles, and crack cocaine was stashed in one of the bathrooms. “I just cried,” says Burke, recalling that day in 1996.

Sixteen years later, the brightly lit lobby sports two armchairs and a coffee table. Where black asphalt once surrounded the buildings, there is now green grass. Sterile white cinder-block hallways now vibrate with colorful stripes of paint. Over the years, “Miz Burke,” as she is known to staff, parents, and students alike, convinced the local faith community to pray for the school, raise funds, and counsel and tutor students. Chimborazo’s scores on the state Standard of Learning exam have climbed, and now the number of students declared “proficient” in math and reading hovers around 60 percent.

Still, 88 percent of Chimborazo’s students are so poor they receive free or reduced-price lunches; with that poverty comes a litany of challenges for the PK-5 school. As bright and beautiful as Burke has made it, Chimborazo reflects its local community, with all its hurts and all its possibilities.

Many Americans, including many Christians, do not consider urban schools like Chimborazo good enough for their children. Despite federal programs such as George Bush’s No Child Left Behind and the Obama administration’s Race to the Top, American students still struggle to achieve basic academic goals. The nonpartisan Broad Foundation for Education reports that 68 percent of American 8th graders can’t read at their grade level, and most will never catch up. Nationally, 70 percent of students graduate from high school, and only 50 percent of African American and Latino students graduate on time.

But in recent years, a growing number of Christians across the country have felt called to take up the educational challenge in their own communities. In many of those communities, including Richmond, Virginia, the tide seems to be turning.

A Dream Realized

Over the past decade, a group of mostly white, middle-class Christian couples have moved into Church Hill, the community served by Chimborazo Elementary School. Unlike most families in Church Hill, these four couples have the financial and social capital to send their kids to private schools or to homeschool. Yet they have chosen otherwise. Building on the firm foundation Principal Burke has laid, they want to help restore a community struggling against generational poverty, and they believe a key component is sending their own children to the community’s public school.

Sophie, Luke, Jack, and Chanan are all kindergarteners at Chimborazo, but the story of how they arrived there begins before they were born.

In 1995, most of their parents met as first-year students at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville. They lived together for their final years of college (along with seven other men, including my husband) as an unintentionally diverse cohort: Corey Widmer, a lanky blonde interested in missional theology, and Matt Illian, then a cross-country runner, are white; Danny Avula, a stocky man who is quick to smile, is Indian; and Romesh Wijesooryia, a Jefferson scholar with athletic gifts that earned him a spot on the college’s nationally ranked soccer team, is Sri Lankan. As the men’s friendships developed, so did their awareness of the ethnic segregation among UVA’s Christians. They wanted to figure out a way to bridge those divides.

So, Wijesooriya led a group of white and black Christians on a spring-break trip to Jackson, Mississippi, to meet Christian community development “grandfather” John Perkins and serve at his Voice of Calvary ministries. The trip sparked a vision. Widmer says, “[We] wondered if one day we might do this together—move into an urban community together and live out the principles of the Christian Community Development Association.”

For years, the vision remained dormant. Then a number of prerequisites fell together. Avula and Wijesooriya joined a residency program at the Medical College of Virginia in downtown Richmond. Illian, a private wealth manager who works from home, had enough job flexibility to move to Richmond. That same year, Widmer received the call to become a pastor in a Richmond church. By that time, each man had married a woman who shared the vision for planting roots deep in an urban community.

But they didn’t want to set up shop in just any poor area.

‘What would it communicate to our neighbors if we said, “We’re moving into your neighborhood, but we don’t consider your schools and public institutions good enough for our families”?’—Corey Widmer, Richmond pastor

“We wanted to be invited into the neighborhood, and we wanted to go to a place where God was already at work,” says Mary Kay Avula. When they visited Church Hill, they met with local Christians. Among them, providentially, was Don Coleman, a local pastor. After they had talked, Coleman “claimed us as an answer to his prayer,” says Avula. “He sensed that the Spirit was calling us long before we did.”

When another Christian, Selena Ruffin, invited the couples to move to her street, three of the four families became her immediate neighbors. The Widmers moved in a few blocks away—all in Church Hill. They soon connected with Angie and Percy Strickland, another Christian couple who had arrived in Church Hill three years prior, setting up Church Hill Activities and Tutoring (CHAT).

Church Hill sits, literally, atop a hill overlooking Richmond’s downtown. Once home to Richmond’s upper class, it still features a number of historic churches. But the demographics have radically changed. It now hosts a majority African American population, and most residents live at or near the poverty line.

The UVA families quickly built relationships with their neighbors: The Wijesooriyas took in a young unmarried couple expecting their first child, and the Widmers housed two high-school boys when their mother needed temporary support. But the uva families soon realized the move would not come without costs. Catherine Illian, a petite woman with curly brown hair, recalls a time when she heard shouting and scuffling outside her door. “I was ready to call the police when I looked outside and saw that it was just a group of men socializing and talking very loudly …. I am still learning the difference between loud friendly banter and something more aggressive.”

Illian faced aggression head-on in August 2007, when she and Mary Kay Avula watched a man across the street firing a handgun. “I was scared,” Avula recalls. “But I was also well aware that there were dangers associated with living here.”

Despite the taste of violence, Avula says her family never considered leaving. “There are dangers no matter what path you choose in life. Some of them you think you can control, but you can’t.”

Each family took jobs that served Richmond’s poor. Danny Avula became Richmond’s deputy director of public health. Romesh Wijesooriya, a pediatrician at Virginia Commonwealth University, began studying childhood obesity, a chronic health problem in urban areas. With Ruffin, some of the families revived a local Christian nonprofit, Urban Hope, to ensure affordable housing throughout the neighborhood. And Mary Kay Avula started teaching at Chimborazo Elementary.

In 2007, John Perkins returned the visit and came to Church Hill. He encouraged the families, but voiced one concern, remembers Widmer: “The church is absent. Without worshiping together, you will become a loose, disconnected group of social activists rather than a Christ-centered community.” That prompted Widmer and Pastor Coleman to form a weekly gathering for Christians and seekers called East End Fellowship.

But a test of their commitment was on its way.

What to do with the Kids?

Within a year or two of arriving in the neighborhood, the couples all had children of their own, and they began to talk about where to send them to school. The adults’ own educational backgrounds were varied: four had attended public schools, three had attended private schools, and one, Catherine Illian, had been homeschooled through 10th grade. The friends talked about starting a charter school, or founding a Church Hill campus of a private school on Richmond’s South Side. But as much as such schools might eventually benefit the community, they chose another option.

“Investing in the public school meant that we were investing in an existing institution that was trusted by the community,” notes Matt Illian. “Anything else that we were to start would really take decades to build that same level of trust.”

But gaining the trust of the community couldn’t be their only concern. “After some pretty intense late-night crying sessions with God and Matt, I decided that Jack would be gaining more than he would be losing … the decision to send him to Chimborazo forced me to trust God in a way I hadn’t before,” says Catherine Illian, recalling her fears about sending their son to Chimborazo. “I grew up in a family where education was one of the most important things that we could do for our kids,” says Danny Avula, who graduated from UVA at age 19, then finished medical school and earned a master’s degree in public health. “But that attitude can become an idol.”

Together the group decided to send their kids to Chimborazo. Corey Widmer asks, “What would it communicate to our neighbors if we said, ‘We’re moving into your neighborhood, but we don’t consider your schools and public institutions good enough for our families’?”

These men and women in Richmond are not alone. Across the nation, Christians are in one way or another investing in local public schools, using a variety of strategies to help turn things around. Nicole Baker Fulgham, a Detroit native, for years taught with Teach for America, a non-profit that trains teachers to work in low-income communities. After serving as Teach for America’s vice president of faith community relations, last fall she founded the Expectations Project, which equips churches, nonprofits, and individuals to help low-income public schools. “I’ve been blown away in the past couple of years by the receptivity and interest of the Christian community,” says Fulgham, who is based in Washington, D.C. “We now have solutions to some of the problems and so we can mobilize faith communities to respond.”

The Memphis Teacher Residency (MTR) is one such solution. It is the only urban teacher residency program in the country with a Christian identity. The nonprofit trains teachers in an intensive one-year residency, where they are paired with a teacher-mentor in a Memphis classroom. By the end, residents have earned a Masters of Arts in urban education through nearby Union University, and a Tennessee state teaching license. In return, residents teach in an underserved Memphis school for at least three years. Founder David Montague roots MTR’s educational reform in a broader context. “We’re only willing to do education reform within a community development approach,” says Montague, “so that a child can be born in [a given neighborhood] and have a great teacher from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade.”

Like the families in Richmond, some Christians begin by moving into low-income neighborhoods. After five years in a strong school district, Kirsten Strand and her husband moved to Aurora, Illinois, to serve in an urban context. They had felt the call for years, but had put off moving because of the struggling school system. Ultimately, “we decided that our kids would receive a wonderful life and cultural education, even if the academic experience wasn’t as enriched,” says Strand. Her husband left his job in corporate America to become a third-grade teacher at the school. Other families moved to East Aurora for similar “missional” reasons. “We’ve found the schools here to be very open and eager to partner with our church, so we’ve been able to start tutoring and mentoring programs and engage in the schools in lots of ways,” says Strand. “We really don’t need to ‘bring God’ to East Aurora. We just need to join him in what he is already doing here.”

Jake Medcalf describes his family’s move into City Heights, California, as “the ministry God dragged us into.” He and his wife, Joan, had been serving the affluent community in Pacific Beach. Jake oversaw youth ministry at a local church, and began forming relationships at the local Mission Beach High School. Only then did he realize that 90 percent of his students were bused to the school from 10 miles—and a socioeconomic world—away. A few years later, he and Joan moved into the kids’ neighborhood, where the average income for a family of four is $18,000. Jake’s philosophy for doing so is simple: “If you’re called to a people, you need to live among the people.” The Medcalfs’ daughter will begin kindergarten at the school next fall. “We could bus her out because our local schools are underperforming,” says Jake. “But we are in the same boat as our neighbors.”

Stephanie McLeish, a mother of three in New Orleans, echoes Medcalf’s sentiments. McLeish’s oldest son attends a local public school where he is the only white student in his class and where 89 percent of his peers receive free or reduced price lunch. McLeish and her husband belonged to a group of families representing four New Orleans neighborhood churches who met for a year to discuss starting a Christian school.

“In the end,” McLeish says, “many of us felt this was an excellent time for the church to engage the public schools of our city.” She explains the theological basis for her convictions: “Christ is at work redeeming all things, not just souls but also places, systems, business, and even education.” McLeish has lived in the neighborhood for a decade, and more recently, she and her husband have invested more deeply in the local school, volunteering regularly and hosting teachers for dinner. “The problems as well as the blessings of living in this impoverished community have become my own,” says McLeish.

‘A Tenuous Hope’

The families who moved into Church Hill have found that forces beyond their control continue to impede Chimborazo’s growth. Mary Kay Avula notes that “many families struggle to get their basic needs met, and some don’t have permanent residences. Many have witnessed acts of violence or have a family member who is incarcerated. Students need a great deal of support to be successful in school when they face the various risk factors associated with poverty.”

Catherine Illian, an active member of Chimborazo’s PTA, explains the challenges of engaging parents: “We have parents without transportation, parents working two jobs, single moms with multiple kids, grandparents as primary guardians, parents who work at night and sleep during the day and find coming to night meetings difficult, parents who didn’t do well in school themselves and are intimidated by school and what that represents.”

But other Christians in Church Hill have filled in the gaps. Principal Burke has organized buses to pick parents up for PTA meetings and found grant funding to host a food bank alongside the meetings. Pastor Coleman joined the Richmond City School Board as a way to represent his neighborhood’s needs. Michelle Macklin, PTA president, and Leon Warlington, another local parent, show up at Chimborazo every morning simply to help in whatever way is needed. CHAT has flourished in recent years and now operates at five different Church Hill locations, tutoring dozens of neighborhood kids one on one a few afternoons a week. Lawson Wijesooriya leads the Blue Sky Fund, a local nonprofit that gives youth from urban environments an outdoor experience. Part of her work involves monthly experiential learning projects with the third-grade students from Chimborazo Elementary.

‘I’ve been blown away in the past couple of years by the receptivity and interest of the Christian community.’—Nicole Baker Fulgham, the Expectations Project

But the most comprehensive effort to address the academic needs of students in the neighborhood has been spearheaded by Matt Illian. He has assembled a taskforce of current and future parents to make Chimborazo the first Richmond City elementary school that follows the International Baccalaureate methodology. The IB initiative would involve overhauling the entire curriculum and training every teacher. But Principal Burke has championed the initiative from its inception, and the vast majority of Burke’s staff voted in support of the curriculum change. The Richmond School Board unanimously supported it.

As Illian says, “We got momentum going because we wanted to support the local elementary school. This wasn’t just for our children. All children [in the area] will receive a world-class education.” Illian’s taskforce has committed to raising over $400,000 to fund the teacher training and media and material upgrades, in order to reach full authorization in May 2014.

As in East Aurora, New Orleans, and City Heights, Church Hill Christians have their sights set on more than education reform. After the birth of her and Danny’s first child, Mary Kay Avula stopped teaching at Chimborazo Elementary. But she invited all the girls from her third-grade class to her house for weekly Bible study. Now in high school, the girls still meet weekly. Mary Kay and Lawson co-lead the study, but also take the girls to doctors’ appointments, help their families pay the bills, and have recently begun steering them through the college admissions process. All girls in the original group have “a sincere faith in the Lord,” says Mary Kay.

Meanwhile, East End Fellowship’s congregation has grown. Corey Widmer describes the 200 congregants who show up every Sunday afternoon as a “pretty amazing mix of people—rich and poor, black and white …. Literally there are homeless people and partners in major law firms sitting in the same room together.”

The couples are quick to point out that while they hope to serve the community, they also assume that they and their families will be blessed by living there. Danny Avula says, “Our neighbors don’t just need us—we need them. In the context of these diverse, complex, and beautiful relationships, we find our wholeness.” They look to the future with what Avula calls “a tenuous hope”—a hope that generations of suffering will be undone by the power of God’s Spirit, at work in believers who continue to pray and look for God’s kingdom to come among them.

Amy Julia Becker, a writer and speaker based in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, is the author of A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny. She writes regularly for Her.meneutics, Christianity Today‘s women’s blog.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Consumerism is a plague on the church, but is our remedy worse than the disease? Using the Parable of the Prodigal Sons, Skye Jethani explores how ministries that seek to transform Christian consumers into Christian activists may do more harm than good.

I am a product of mentoring. When I joined my church as a young man, I didn’t just need accountability from brothers. I needed authority from fathers. And by God’s grace, I found spiritual fathers willing to lead me. They encouraged me, prayed for me, helped me financially at times, laughed with me, cried with me, rebuked me, and absolved me. They taught me about theology and doctrine—as well as how to be a husband and a father. I have watched them govern their families, and the church. I tried to remain teachable when they spoke into my life. When I heeded their counsel, things went well for me. Here are four principles I’ve learned from them that I now use regularly in my own role as an elder and pastor.

Trust your authorities

This isn’t easy to do—I know from experience. My wife and I have 10 children (almost enough for a reality show!). When we “only” had six, we were living in a small parsonage of a neighboring church. The house had three small rooms, hardly ideal accommodations for a family of eight. I approached my elders for counsel because financial matters are not my strength. They considered my finances and other life circ*mstances and counseled me to stay in our rented parsonage a little longer. I was furious! I didn’t have to seek their counsel in the first place. They had no idea what it was like to live the way that we were living. But I sensed the Holy Spirit saying, “If you want things to go well with you, trust your elders.”

So, we waited. A year later, and expecting our seventh child, a friend told us she was selling her house. We scraped together a down payment and, with the blessing of our elders, bought our home. Shortly after we moved in, another friend expressed interest in helping us in a ministry that we had started to lower income families. He wanted to cover our mortgage each month and he has done so for nearly 10 years. By trusting my elders, things have gone well for us indeed.

Listening builds trust

Since I founded our church’s ministry to help lower-income families in our city, I’ve learned a lot about the need for patience. In the early days, I was filled with doubt and struggled to know how to lead a ministry and provide direction. I would sit with my elders and they would listen and patiently guide me. I didn’t always like their suggestions and some of their ideas simply didn’t work. But they always honestly listened to me and they prayed for me. That helped me to trust their guidance.

It’s a lesson I’ve put to use in my leadership. When people disagree with a decision I’ve made, I don’t try to win an argument. I have learned the importance of truly hearing their objections and concerns. Even if I could persuade someone of my opinion with clear and compelling reasons, patience and listening has a way of softening people’s hearts. I have even asked a dear brother who disagreed with a decision I made to simply trust me. And I think it was easier for him to do so because he felt like he was heard and respected.

Use challenges to serve and love.

For the past 16 years our preaching pastor has often risen at three or four in the morning. It’s not because he’s an early bird. He has trouble sleeping. But he wisely uses the time to prepare sermons and care for his own soul in Bible reading and prayer. We’ve benefitted from his quiet service in the night hours in myriad ways.

His service was a model for me. Now, at 43 years old, I find myself waking in the middle of the night. When I am unable to get back to sleep I often think to myself, Dennis would use this opportunity to pray and read and prepare. So I get up and pray and read and prepare. My authority served me and I want to serve others as a result.

Following precedes leading

Christian discipleship is all about following. As disciples of Jesus, we are all followers first and foremost. Following first is a lesson that extends throughout life. Children learn to follow God by obeying their parents. Apprentices learn a craft my mimicking a master. In the church we learn to lead by following our elders and pastors and overseers. There’s a practical payoff as well. Not everyone is a natural leader. Some of us learned to lead by following. Become a good follower. It’s not an easy thing to do. But in the long run it will make you a wiser leader, one that others will be glad to follow.

Ross Guthrie is a pastor at Christ Community Church in Jackson, Tennessee.

Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The “Painter of Light” Thomas Kinkade has died Friday in his California home, according to the San Jose Mercury News. He was 54. A statement from the family said that his death appeared to be from natural causes, the newspaper reports.

The Christian artist became well known for his paintings of idyllic cottages, creating at least 1,000 paintings of landscapes, churches, gardens, lighthouses, and seascapes. His paintings often featured streams, bridges, and light radiating from a cottage. His website had described him as the most-collected living American artist.

In 2010, Kinkade was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after one of his firms filed for bankruptcy. The FBI was investigating whether he fraudulently induced investors and ruined them financially, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2006. Before Kinkade’s group went private, the company made $32 million per quarter from 4,500 dealers, according to the Mercury News.

Kinkade studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Art Center of College of Design, though he dropped out of the schools. His art sold well but received much criticism in the art community. He was named artist of the year by the National Association of Limited Edition Dealers in 1995, and chosen as designated graphic artist of the year for three years. In 1999, he was voted into U.S. Art magazine’s hall of fame.

Kinkade is survived by his wife and four children. Many of his works include a Bible reference, a fish (ichthus), his signature, and the letter N in honor of his wife, Nanette. “Paintings are the tools that can inspire the heart to greater faith,” Kinkade has said. “My paintings are messengers of God’s love. Nature is simply the language which I speak.”

Updated (4/12): A new report from The Daily suggests that a Santa Clara County dispatcher described the call as a “54-year-old male, unconscious, not breathing. Apparently he has been drinking all night and not moving … CPR in progress.”

Earlier this week, the San Jose Mercury News reported that Kinkade’s wife had filed for legal separation about two years ago. She and the couple’s children were in Australia at the time of his death. Kinkade’s live-in girlfriend, Amy Pinto, 48, who made the 911 call, told the Mercury News that he “died in his sleep, very happy, in the house he built, with the paintings he loved, and the woman he loved.”

The Los Gatos police told The Daily they had responded to a couple of calls to his house in the past. Results of toxicology and other tests from the autopsy could take up to 20 weeks, according to the report.

The Kinkade Company has not decided how it will reveal his unreleased work, a spokesman told The Daily. Since his death, his paintings have sold for up to $10,000.

Christianity Today articles on the artist include “Gallery of Accusations,” “Darkness Looms for ‘Painter of Light,'” and “The Kinkade Crusade.”

Pope Benedict XVI made no secret that the papal office came as a heavy burden to him—as a cross to be carried. Indeed, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, he had repeatedly tried to retire from his previous post as head of the Vatican office for overseeing church doctrine, but Pope John Paul II always refused his resignation. When his predecessor died in 2005, Ratzinger hoped to retire after the papal conclave. During the conclave, when the votes began to go his way, the cardinal—by nature a shy and retiring academic—began to pray, “Please don’t do this to me.”

That unheeded prayer is echoed by practically the entire college of cardinals in the papal conclave in the opening of Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope, or Habemus Papam. (The title refers to the traditional Latin phrase with which the new pope’s election is proclaimed from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, where the pope makes his first appearance and gives his first Urbi et Orbi blessing to the world.)

Moretti gives us closeups on one cardinal after another, their inner pleadings in voiceover, until the camera pulls back as a clamor of recusant prayers ascends to heaven: Non io, Signore … Not me, I pray thee … No, Señor. This mildly amusing but ham-fisted sequence is typical of the film’s sensibilities, for good and for ill—more the latter than the former, alas.

In a way it’s like the antithesis of a Dan Brown novel. Brown’s stories peer with feverish, lurid imagination at the inner workings of the Catholic hierarchy, discovering all manner of ridiculous subterfuge, ruthlessness, and skulduggery. Moretti’s film hardly peers at all. It’s good-natured and inoffensive, regarding the cardinals with gentle amusem*nt. But there’s no complexity or ambiguity, no depth or insight.

There are no ambitious cardinals angling for the Petrine office. No charismatic natural leaders (like Karol Wojtyla, who became John Paul II), ready and willing to serve as God wills. No conflicted candidates struggling to resign themselves to whatever cross God might wish them bear, as Cardinal Ratzinger took up his cross. Not even any confirmed non-contenders who aren’t worried because they aren’t in the running—aren’t papabile or pope material. (By the way, if you thought the term was preferiti, you’ve been reading too much Dan Brown.)

Nothing differentiates any of the cardinals from the others, and when the vote falls to a surprise candidate, one Cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli), there’s no interest in why the votes went his way. Asked if he accepts the election, the stunned cardinal stammers out the expected response. Yet later—just after the Habemus Papam proclamation, but before his name has been announced to the world—Melville suffers a panic attack and flees, leaving the cardinal protodeacon hanging on the balcony before the world. Awkward.

It’s impossible not to feel empathy for the plight of the hapless cardinal catapulted into a position of incalculable responsibility for which he feels wholly inadequate. Yet as his initial panic fades and his paralysis stretches to minutes, hours, days and weeks, it becomes equally impossible not to feel increasingly frustrated with the new pope’s apparent lack of empathy for the plight into which his mulish immobility has plunged his colleagues, the throngs of pilgrims stranded in St. Peter’s Square, and the entire Catholic world.

His name still unknown to the world, Melville (presumably he picked a papal name, since it’s the second question after being asked if he accepts his election, but we aren’t told what it is) agonizes in the recesses of the Apostolic Palace. He talks to a psychotherapist (played by Moretti himself), an amusingly impractical session in which the therapist is forbidden to ask all the kinds of questions therapists typically ask, while the whole college of cardinals stands by watching. Eventually the pope goes AWOL, wandering the streets of Rome, taking solace in his anonymity.

Meanwhile, the cardinals remain sequestered; the spokesman for the Holy See (Jerzy Stuhr) stalls and makes excuses to the media; the pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square continuing praying and singing; heads of state issue statements expressing concern … and the world waits.

Throughout this holding pattern, the pope’s thoughts are dominated by a single, intractable idea: I can’t do this. To all appeals to act, he pleads for more time. He says he has no problems with his faith, and acknowledges that God has called him. Yet he also says that God sees qualities in him that aren’t there (which seems contrary to his claim about his faith).

At no time does anyone follow or even propose any of the obvious courses of action. Obviously, the pope should pray—and his colleagues should pray, and urge him to pray—that God give him grace and guidance to do what he ought. If he believes he is called to the papacy, he should disregard his feelings and, well, pope up. Or, if he’s convinced beyond question that he can’t do it, he should resign—immediately and quietly—and let the conclave elect a new successor.

None of this is considered. Melville’s faith is wholly theoretical, along with every other character (not counting the anonymous throngs in St. Peter’s Square). Those “Not me” prayers are the only signs of prayer we see from any of the cardinals: They’re never seen saying or attending Mass, or praying their daily office. None of them prays during the conclave for guidance regarding the selection of the successor to Peter, or for God’s will to be done. Contemplating their votes, they look more like schoolboys enduring a difficult test than princes of the church fulfilling a sacred trust.

During the subsequent crisis, the cardinals play cards, exercise, and eventually—under the direction of the frustrated therapist—organize a comic volleyball tournament. One of the cardinals airily informs the therapist that the existence of the soul and the subconscious are mutually exclusive. Later a cardinal speaks disparagingly about godless Darwinism (though without denying evolutionary theory per se). Critical thought does not seem to be a virtue of the Catholic hierarchy.

If the pope doesn’t question his faith, it’s because he doesn’t question anything. His whole world seems made up of self-evident, unassailable, brute facts: I’m the pope. God called me. I can’t do it. I need more time. I’ve always loved theater. I’m tired. Piccoli brings as much warmth and sympathy as possible to what eventually becomes, in spite of his efforts, an off-putting character.

Melville’s insistence that he needs more time is unconflicted by any sense of urgency for the plight of the world. He does seem troubled by the crowds in St. Peter’s Square, but is unmoved to action, or even to awareness that he ought to act. Although he meets with nothing but kindness from strangers on the streets of Rome, he has startling outbursts of anger.

Melville insists that there are things he’d like to do as pope—there’s so much in the church that needs changing. (That’s about as close to controversy as the film gets.) Yet after seeing a second psychotherapist (the first therapist’s ex-wife, whose fixation on “parental deficit” is one of the movie’s few ideas), the pope announces that it make take a couple of years to sort through his problems. If that’s the case, immediate resignation is the only remotely non-psychotic decision. But We Have a Pope doesn’t seem meant to be a portrait of psychosis.

One can at least appreciate the production values. Moretti seamlessly dovetails footage from Pope John Paul II’s funeral and crowds thronging St. Peter’s Square with staged footage of his cardinals processing into the conclave. The Sistine Chapel and Sala Regia hall of the Apostolic Palace are impressively recreated in the Cinecittà studios, while the Palazzo Farnese and Villa Medici double for other Vatican locations. A Swiss Guard swearing-in ceremony in the Vatican Gardens is a nice touch.

Yet in the end, when decisive action is finally undertaken, the right thing is done in the worst possible way, causing maximum consternation and confusion for all concerned. What was the point? We Have a Pope is a premise in search of a thesis, a handful of scenes in search of a story. I can’t imagine a better summary than this line from my friend Ken Morefield’s review: “Dramatically speaking, we never get any white smoke.”

(We Have a Pope opens in limited theaters today, and with IFC on Demand on April 11.)

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Have you ever felt that God was calling you to do something you didn’t want to do or didn’t feel capable of? What was it? What finally happened?
2. While the pope is AWOL, the Vatican spokesman orchestrates a ruse involving a Swiss Guard impersonating the pope in the papal apartments. Is it ever acceptable to deceive people for the sake of a greater good? Are the moral rules different for governments and states (the Pope being a head of state as well as the head of the Catholic church)?
3. Do you think the pope’s problem is spiritual or psychological? Is it important for a believer with problems affecting their faith life to see a believing counselor? Is the therapist’s stated unbelief an issue in his ability to help the pope? Why or why not?
4. By the same token, director Nanni Moretti—who plays the therapist—is not a believer. Some great films with religious themes have come from unbelieving writers or directors (A Man for All Seasons; Sophie Scholl: The Final Days; The Gospel According to Matthew). Why do you think some unbelieving filmmakers make films about faith more compelling than many Christian films? Do you think Moretti succeeds? Why or why not?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

We Have a Pope is unrated. The material obviously isn’t aimed at kids, but content issues are basically limited to a single F-word and some mixed religious themes. For instance, one cardinal assures the nonbelieving therapist that he won’t go to hell because “hell is deserted.” The real issues are issues of omission (the absence of practical faith and prayer, etc.).

Photos © IFC Films

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

… that maketh a man’s heart glad and maketh him sing, …

To become designated,mainly:

to be eligiblefor thesesweepstakes,

deepest essential,perennial/s, oh so personal,

costing everything.To take one moment

to find one’s selfsuddenly visible,

composed, risibly, of thosecharacters—

yr little namemade legiblein the ledger,

all merry, glad, & manageableeven at the extremes.

Neither allegednor even remotelyoutcast or leg-chained.

(Mainlyif dashed to be yet elevated.)

So muchstill remainingthat’s salvageable,

eventually teemingw/ consummate value, even

in the extremities.

Brett Foster is associate professor of English at Wheaton College. The Garbage Eater, his first collection of poems, was published last year by Northwestern University Press. A new collection, Fall Run Road, recently won Finishing Line Press’s chapbook competition, and is forthcoming.