With Drug Abuse Raging, Zimbabwe’s Churches Turn from Punishment to Mercy

Christian leaders can no longer defer the widespread addiction crisis to schools and prisons.

A poster warning of the dangers of crystal meth goes up in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Jekesai Njikizana / AFP via Getty Images

A drug abuse crisis is raging in Zimbabwe, with experts and medics warning that a staggering 57 percent of Zimbabwe’s youth are involved with illicit drugs, from cocaine and ecstasy to tainted cough syrup and illegally brewed beers.

The church hasn’t been spared, and many leaders say they’re unsure how to respond.

“At first, ten years ago, we would suspend church youths dabbling in cocaine or ecstasy pills or illicit whiskies, intimidating them with Bible verses,” said Benny Guyo, a pastor with the United Baptist Church of Zimbabwe in Harare. “Now, we try to dialogue with them and get them help. If not, we will lose half the congregation.”

There’s a sense of hopelessness among Zimbabwe’s young people. They struggle to see prospects in a country with the highest inflation in the world and staggering unemployment.

Most of the population is under 25, and 41 percent of them are looking for a job, according to an Afrobarometer survey released in late 2023. Trade unionists say this is a conservative figure; real unemployment could be double that.

In this cultural climate, drugs have taken off. Transnational networks, shipping contraband from Asia or South America, are supplying Zimbabwe’s streets, taking with them lucrative profits but leaving behind public health issues and societal devastation.

“It’s mayhem: illicit powders, drinks, pills, or cigarettes,” said Tynos Magombedze, a retired Adventist pastor and now an anti-corruption activist in Bulawayo, the country’s second-largest city.

When the illicit drugs problem began around 2013, schools and prisons tried to suppress it. “Headmasters were empowered to beat errant youths as some sort of discipline,” said Magombedze. “Prison officers would round up street dealers and users of cannabis or ecstasy.”

Churches in Zimbabwe tend to be quite conservative, so they watched from the sidelines, deferring the drug abuse issue to other institutions. In a few circumstances when drug users were identified in churches, the default option was to rebuke, suspend, or expel worshipers who were battling addictions.

“We were acting holier-than-thou, closing our eyes, pretending drugs don’t exist in churches,” said Guyo.

But over the past decade, the crisis has overpowered police, prisons, and schools and has overflowed into churches.

“The drug menace has landed at our pulpits,” said church elder Josini Moyo.

It may have been there all along. Churches had largely failed to see that their youth, and in some instances their pastors too, had been battling addictions.

In townships and affluent suburbs, churches from large denominations, such as Anglican and Catholic churches, typically displayed inspirational Christian verses or Sunday service times. Now, they have signs on or near their churches with messages like “Drugs Kill All Dreams,” “Resist the Scourge of Drugs,” and even “Drugs Are the Antichrist.”

“A new urgency has arrived,” said Moyo, who serves at Zion Christian Church (ZCC) in Zimbabwe. The biggest African-initiated church in the country, ZCC doesn’t belong to the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe or the Zimbabwe Council of Churches.

Across traditions and denominations, Zimbabwe’s churches have been thrust into unfamiliar territory by the drug crisis.

In addition to erecting antidrug billboards on church gates, they’re tweaking some youth worship meetings and repurposing them as drug counseling workshops, introducing drug messaging in Sunday services, and welcoming back suspended members who are battling addictions or have undergone recovery.

“I thank the church for making a U-turn,” said Ashlee Gutu, 33, pastor of the Jekenisheni Church in Zimbabwe.

Five years ago, Gutu lost his marriage, finances, and job as a pastor when his addiction to ecstasy pills and crystal methamphetamine (called mutoriro in Zimbabwe) threw him off course. The church suspended him for one year.

Jekenisheni Church began informally in the 1920s and is one of the oldest indigenous Apostolic churches across the country and in neighboring Mozambique. It has been largely detached from older Western denominations as well as Zimbabwe’s urban, post-colonial evangelicals.

But while battling addiction on the sidelines, Gutu says he met several elders of his church and other denominations who secretly confided in him that they too were fighting addictions to cannabis or alcohol.

“They were Anglicans, Adventists, Pentecostals, Methodists, everyone you can think of,” he added.

When Gutu agreed to go to a trial rehab program that the Jekenisheni Church had established in alliance with private medical counselors and therapists, Gutu’s life improved.

His church started refer congregants and pastors who were battling addictions to therapy, with the church paying the participating counselors and doctors. The in-house therapy program has worked with 40 congregants battling addictions in the past two years, and 25 of them have beat their problems, he said.

Other Christian networks are also active against the country’s drug abuse epidemic. For example, in May in Chitungwiza (the most populous township of the capital), the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabw e (EFZ), together with Teen Rescue Mission (TRM), hosted community outreach meetings and anti-drug prayer weeks as a way of confronting the pandemic.

“We have instructed pastors in our networks to visit schools and public markets and teach teenagers about the linked troubles of drug abuse, teen pregnancies, and school dropout. We are meeting troubled youths who want to be directed to accessible rehabilitation programs. In a few years, our efforts should bear fruit in the antidrug fight,” said Dino Matsika, a youth outreach coordinator with the EFZ.

Despite the surge in illicit drug abuse, the country’s struggling public health care system simply has no money for therapy. Compared to urgent issues of infectious diseases (tuberculosis, HIV, malaria), the illicit drug abuse menace is seen as a lesser priority. It doesn’t help that, according to a Lancet medical survey, Zimbabwe only has 17 registered psychiatrists in a country with a population of 15 million.

“A realistic way to beat this is for churches to stand loud on the pulpit and band together with police, schools, NGOs, government, and parents, and steer youths from drugs,” said Guyo. “We must not work in silos.”

- More from Deogracias Kalima

News

Berlin Church Plant Embraces All That Jazz

Ken Chitwood in Berlin

Music in the German capital opens up evangelical opportunities and “spiritual connection.”

Ali Maegraith performs Jazz during a church service in Berlin.

Courtesy of Felix Ziebarth | Edits by Christianity Today.

It’s Saturday night, and you’re looking for jazz in Germany’s capital. You could catch an after-midnight jam session at A-Trane in Charlottenburg, get cozy in the stylish, intimate ambience of the Zig Zag Club in Friedenau, or catch a solo saxophonist serenading the crowd at Berlin’s oldest jazz club, Quasimodo.

And there’s one more option: You could wait until morning and go to church in the Wedding district.

One part church plant, one part jazz project, Kiez Church (Neighborhood Church), in the multiethnic district of Wedding is led by Ali and Rich Maegraith, Australian missionaries who say they want to bring the gospel to the cosmopolitan city’s art scene.

Berlin is a magnet for musicians—a place to connect and prove your chops. The German capital is a hub for many different European music scenes, from electronic dance to Afropop, classical to klezmer, and attracts creative people from all over.

The Maegraiths, who moved to Berlin in 2015, say that’s their in. The city’s music scene provides them with evangelistic opportunities. Rich, a professional jazz musician, and Ali, a vocalist and songwriter, moved to the city to serve with the European Christian Mission agency.

“We’ve met many people through jam sessions, performances, or just busking on the streets,” Ali told CT.

When they first arrived, Rich would go to jam sessions every night, all over the city.

“In Berlin, the jazz scene is already a community, where people will play and hang out together until the early hours of the morning,” he said. “They even call it ‘jazz church.’”

Berlin’s nightlife is more readily associated with techno and punk, but it also has a long historical relationship with jazz. The improvisational, syncopated music first came to the German capital at the end of World War I, when it was warmly received by the post-war population of the Weimar Republic.

When the American-born French singer and dancer Josephine Baker visited Berlin in 1925, she found the city dazzling with a vibrant jazz scene. Her performances were received with warm adulation. And popular performers like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington took the city by storm at a time when it was the third largest metropolitan area in the world by population.

Nazis put an end to jazz when they took control, but it came back with the Allied victory in World War II. Soldiers stationed in the city brought the music of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Miles Davis with them. This time, jazz stuck.

Today, Berlin is one of the best places in Europe to hear a live jazz show. And one of the places you can do that is at Kiez Church Wedding.

The Sunday morning set-up is laid back, with a homey feel: There’s a Turkish rug on the floor, a map of Berlin’s neighborhoods on the wall, a smattering of musical equipment on stage, and a bunch of house plants. The music is a mix of contemporary Christian worship songs and a worship-themed jazz jam session with Ali, Rich, and other musicians they have met along the way.

The Maegraiths call it “dual thing.” They want to offer a biblically grounded community for young people living in Wedding and use their musical gifts to create improvisational forms of church music.

Celebrating its fourth anniversary in September 2024, the church offers bilingual German and English worship. Leadership is shared between Germans and Australians, and the staff includes international interns, students, and immigrants.

About 30 people regularly attend Kiez Church. A lot of them are artists, musicians, and students, or young professions.

Rich, who preaches most Sundays, shared his own experience of being a professional musician.

“Anyone coming to visit can hear how their pastor knows what it’s like to be living in the world,” he said. “He’s not in some Christian bubble, doing churchy stuff, he’s part of the city’s day-to-day experience.”

The church plant has been pretty successful—which is hard to do in Europe. Rich and Ali, however, said they didn’t start with much of a plan. They are, by their account, “accidental church planters.”

“We weren’t well-versed with the models when we started; it just kind of happened,” said Ali.

Ever the jazz musicians, they have improvised their way through church planting. At their fourth anniversary service, for example, Ali and Rich put together the set list the night before, without the chance to rehearse before going “live” in worship the next day. It worked.

“We are just doing our thing,” Ali said. “We pray, wait on the lord, see what happens, what he does.

“I still have moments wondering, ‘Is this really a church?’” Ali said.

Now, after four years, the “dual thing” jazz church has turned into an LP to share with the city and others who are interested in a record of jazz grounded in the life of a church.

The album the Berlin Psalm Project released with a special concert in March 2024 is a collection of psalms set to modern jazz, written and performed by Ali and a group of international, Berlin-based performers. Ali said the album reflects the way the Psalms “speak to the deepest inner longings of all human beings” and give “a modern voice to ancient conversations with the Creator.”

Some songs emphasize lament and others joy and adoration, including renditions of Psalm 8 (“Oh Lord our God”), Psalm 46 (“Gott ist unsere Zuflucht und Stärke”), and Psalm 27 (“Der Herr ist mein Licht”), preformed on trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, bass, piano, and drums, with Rich on tenor sax and bass clarinet.

Above all else, Ali believes, Berliners just want you to be honest.

“They want to hear authentic expressions, to know what you really feel and where you’re coming from,” she said, “and that’s what the Psalms are all about—they are some of the most honest parts of the Bible.”

And jazz, Ali has found, shares that deep commitment to authenticity, pairing well with biblical texts. Improvisation captures the emotion and essence of a moment and provides “the perfect setting to explore deeply into what it means to pour out our hearts in vulnerability before God,” she said.

Katya Sourikova, a pianist and composer who has worked with the Maegraiths on other recordings, said the project impressed her with its breadth of bold, dramatic, and theatrical musical expressions. The spectrum of modern jazz on the album is “not what one would immediately associate with the setting of religious texts,” she said, but it “sets this project apart from many others working in this genre.”

The project has also impressed church leaders who appreciate the crossover between the arts and faith. In a rave review, Mark Lau, director of worship arts at Redeemer Downtown in New York City, called the project “a sublime work of art, vision, and energy.”

Lau said the Berlin Psalm Project is “a beautifully nuanced combination of uplifting lyrics, majestic ensemble writing, telepathic improvisation, bubbling textures and infectious groove. Instantly accessible yet driven by a subtle complexity that keeps the listener engaged throughout.”

Franz Weidauer, a mathematician and electric guitarist in Leipzig, a city in Germany’s east known for its connection to Johann Sebastian Bach, also loves the album. He said it’s a fresh expression of art and faith in Europe.

“People might see the Psalms as ‘old-fashioned,’” Weidauer said, “but they are, in many ways, a modern songbook, a voice for what we are feeling today.”

Weidauer works with Crescendo, a network of Christian artists and musicians founded in Basel, Switzerland, which now has locations across Europe. He has played in various praise bands, jazz combos, and indie groups over the years. When he listens to the Maegraiths’ album, he said he is reminded of how jazz music has the power to speak to people on a deep level.

“There’s a sense of transcendence through jazz,” Weidauer said, “the power to connect us to a creative force—even those who are hesitant to talk about ‘God.’”

That’s the kind of innovation and improvisation that creates evangelical opportunities in urban centers like Berlin. Weidauer said he hopes others embrace the idea of jazz in church. Kiez Church could be a model for other “accidental” church planters to follow.

“What the Maegraiths have done is provide people a broader perspective on what ‘church music’ can be,” Weidauer said. “Urban people, who might not otherwise be interested in classical church settings, are open to spiritual connection. … Jazz music can open that connection.”

- More from Ken Chitwood

Theology

Reading Scripture through Embodied Eyes

Jeannine Hanger

Engaging our senses can help us connect with the Bible in a more holistic way.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Pexels

We all lead diverse sensory lives—in the form of memories, reflections, emotions, and events that become embedded into our embodied lives.

It is through our five senses that we encounter the world, and these experiences get encoded into the fabric of our beings to be later recalled, from compassion and peace to trauma and violence. In other words, our physical senses matter to how we walk through this life. But more than that, they reflect the creativity and beauty of God himself.

We are all gifted with varying abilities to sense the world—to see, feel, hear, smell, taste, speak, and move. And I am convinced that if we pay attention, we can harness these abilities to experience more of God’s goodness. Just as “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31a), we can participate in the beauty and magnificence of God’s created order through our bodily senses.

Part of how we experience and understand the good world God made is by touching the soft fur of a kitten, by tasting the sweetness of a luscious berry, or by hearing the melodic song of a bird. If God has created us to be in relationship with him—and if we are invited to love him with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength—then we should relate to him with our entire embodied selves.

But do our physical senses matter in how we read the Bible? As you might guess, the short answer is yes. I believe we can engage God through his Word in a more embodied way—to live out more fully the psalmist’s invitation to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8).

Yet here is the problem: We often limit ourselves to engaging with God through a text. Surely, the revelation of God as expressed in the Word is critical. But this revelation is much more than collections of letters on a page, accessed only by reading through sight or sound.

The words on a page in a biblical text articulate a world that mirrors our own—they contain a series of narratives about sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. Which means our sensory lives can access the sensory aspects of Scripture. But where in the Word can we begin?

Perhaps we could start with the Word himself, described in John 1 as the person of Jesus—to bring our sensory lives into conversation with a good God as revealed through the Word made flesh.

All four gospel narratives animate the works and words of Jesus using multisensory language, each contributing to a vivid portrait of believers’ relationship with him. This approach will take what is tangible in our worlds—our own sensory experiences—and harness them toward two goals.

First, our sensory knowledge provides an entry into exploring the sensory world of the gospel narratives as understood by ancient readers. Second, these sensory findings resonate back onto our own sensory worlds and can give us a more embodied understanding of the text.

In the Gospels, we hear Jesus compare the kingdom of God to an extravagant dinner party where all are welcome. God is the compassionate, generous host, and he serves the finest food and drink, that all might enjoy this joyous union together (Matt. 22). Jesus plays host when he embodies this generosity in remote places, feeding people who need hope and a filling meal. And ultimately, Jesus claims to be the very bread of life (John 6:35) that we consume to find true and lasting nourishment.

As we continue to “chew” on Jesus’ invitation to the banquet table, can these metaphors teach us something about the quality of our interaction with Jesus?

Have you ever eaten a memorable meal and talked about it for weeks afterward? Do certain foods carry so much significance that they are served only on important occasions? What kinds of routines do you have in your life involving certain foods?

Coffee is for first thing in the morning, vegetable stew is for dreary winter days, garlic mashed potatoes are only at grandma’s dinner table, and baked-from-scratch red velvet birthday cake is so decadent that we eat it only once a year. We have habits and rote practices around foods that nourish us and that call to mind certain seasons, people, joys, and sorrows in our lives.

Or let’s reflect on the physical acts of eating and drinking—we interact with food and drink daily and continually to stay alive. Our relationship to sustenance is not a one-and-done, all-you-can-eat buffet that sustains us for a lifetime. Instead, we eat and drink routinely, habitually, waking up each day with new caloric needs. This is a dynamic existence, one that manifests a continual dependence on nutrients for survival.

Have you ever been hungry? Sure, every day. We wake up with the need to eat and drink, and our hunger goes away with each meal, but then it returns. In other words, we will never outgrow our dependence on nutrients.

This might go against our instincts—to say that we will be forever dependent. In the modern, well-fed, individualistic waters in which we swim, the tide flows in the direction of independence. We raise our up-and-coming generations to develop into self-sufficient, autonomous human beings who can take care of themselves.

It can be easy for our hearts to default toward searching for the kind of peace fueled by our own internal reserves. We find comfort when we can control the fortifications we have constructed around us. We are accustomed to an “I can do it myself because I’m capable” approach to life. We never want to put others out. Or maybe we don’t want to appear weak.

It’s only when we are confronted with threats to our independence—whether through sickness, economic challenge, physical or relational loss, or mental-emotional-psychological pain—that our equilibrium gets thrown off. Such challenges force us into a dependence that feels unnatural and is mostly countercultural.

We often respond by fighting against our dependency—we seek relief from it; we want it to end; we don’t find “peace” until our internal reserves of self-sufficiency are restored. These are the times when we let others into our need—when we are desperate, when our resources are depleted. But we always hope that it’s temporary.

But this sense of dependence is very key to our hunger for Christ—when we are most in touch with our dependence, vulnerability, and need, we are in the ideal posture for finding Jesus. Those who recognize their hunger are the ones who tend to clamor for the next meal, to gather the manna from the ground, and to hang on Jesus’ every word and follow him no matter what.

I worry about living such a life where I endlessly and unthinkingly invest my energies into my own self-sufficiency and autonomy. How might this inhibit me from knowing my hunger and my need for Jesus, the living bread?

My independence could easily lull me into this notion that I have control and set my heart into a posture that keeps Jesus at arm’s length: I’m good. I’ve got this! It’s the same message we tell our friends and neighbors: Don’t worry about me, Jesus. I’ll let you know when I really need you. We end up saving Jesus for times of emergency. But we need food every day.

As we consider Jesus—the living bread whose once-for-all sacrifice of flesh and blood sustains us into eternity—can we also consider how this union with him is continuous and ongoing?

This is exactly how we see this play out in Scripture. Day after day, God rained down manna from heaven to feed his people in the wilderness. Jesus similarly provided a feast for a crowd, and he did so with compassion and welcome. And he also offers himself as the meal: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them” (John 6:56 NRSVue).

This sounds to me like a constant interaction, one that never ends. It’s marked by welcome, ongoing presence, sustenance, and meeting continual need. We need never be without him.

- More from Jeannine Hanger

Culture

Houston Ballet Debuts New Work Based on … C.S. Lewis

Emily Belz in Houston

One of the largest ballet companies in the US has commissioned a piece about “The Four Loves.”

Houston Ballet first soloists Harper Watters, Julian Lacey, and Gian Carlo Perez perform in Silas Farley’s Four Loves.

Photo by Amitava Sarkar / Courtesy of Houston Ballet

C. S. Lewis wrote at the end of his book The Four Loves that he didn’t feel like he could fully express the nature of love on the page. “I dare not proceed,” he concluded.

Now one of the largest ballet companies in the United States is trying to fill in where words fall short, commissioning Four Loves by choreographer Silas Farley with a full orchestral score by composer Kyle Werner. The one-act ballet premiered at Houston Ballet over the weekend.

At a dress rehearsal before the premiere in the Houston Ballet’s lush performance space of burgundy walls, soaring ceilings, and red velvet seats, Farley sat at the tech booth watching dancers bring his vision to life, from a romantic pas de deux to a climactic final movement that features about 30 dancers.

Farley, a retired dancer with the New York City Ballet, is close friends with composer Werner. They met at church in New York City. Though the collaborators want everyone to be able to connect with Four Loves no matter their background, the ballet does depict their Christian artistic vision. As the curtain rises, three dancers are already spinning in a circle, representing the Trinitarian love of God that was active before time began.

“As Christians, we believe that the centerpiece and the starting point and the through line of all of history is the mysterious community of persons who are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” said Farley, who is the type of person who can delve into the theology of the Trinity about half a minute into conversation. “The community of love that they are from before time is what overflowed and made everything. I think we’re able to show it even more clearly than we can speak it.”

Farley was in church in Houston the Sunday before his ballet premiered. As the congregation recited the Nicene Creed, the words struck him: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.”

“You see this in the choreography,” he said.

The Houston Ballet survived significant damage from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and then closures during the pandemic, but it has the reputation and budget to regularly commission new works from renowned contemporary choreographers like Justin Peck.

The ballet’s artistic directors, Stanton Welch and Julie Kent (a longtime principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre), gave Farley full freedom to do whatever he wanted—which was a ballet based on C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves.

The text examines four classically Greek categories: storge (familial love), philia (friendship), eros (romantic love), and agape (divine love). Werner and Farley thought the four loves mapped well onto a traditional four-movement symphony, so that’s what Werner composed in the space of a few months.

In Farley’s ballet, the storge movement depicts a mother-daughter relationship, the philia movement depicts two male friends, the eros movement depicts a male and female couple, and the agape movement depicts the Trinity, bringing the loves from the other movements together. (The different persons of the Trinity also appear throughout the other movements.)

As Four Loves progresses, sky-blue and flesh-toned costumes fully transform into shades of white or brown, fabric dyed to match the dancers’ individual skin colors. Farley is in the minority in ballet as a Black dancer, and highlighting a diverse group of dancers swirling around the three figures of the Trinity was important to him.

The storge movement depicts a mother-daughter relationship. Houston Ballet principal Jessica Collado and first soloist Tyler Donatelli with artists of Houston Ballet. Photo by Amitava Sarkar / Courtesy of Houston Ballet

At the Houston Ballet two days before the premiere, dancers were in the studio practicing, doing lifts and sweating through their T-shirts. Farley observed and made notes, at times demonstrating particular movements. With his background as a longtime dancer at the New York City Ballet (NYCB), Farley considers himself to be following the neoclassical tradition of NYCB founder George Balanchine, the leading choreographer of 20th-century ballet. Balanchine created a piece called The Four Temperaments.

When Farley was a dancer at NYCB a decade ago, he met Werner at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. Werner had just finished a PhD at Manhattan School of Music. An early meal together stretched to three hours; the two couldn’t stop talking. They became fast friends.

“It was funny because in The Four Loves, Lewis talks about in philia, in friendship, the kind of spark of realizing a kind of common passion, of looking at someone else and being like, ‘You too?’” said Werner. “We really experienced that. … then that eventually led to this piece.”

Farley retired from the ballet in 2020 at the ripe old age of 26. Ballet is like being a professional athlete; Farley’s brother plays in the NFL, and they’ve compared notes on their vocations’ toll on their bodies. Farley now teaches ballet at Southern Methodist University and choreographs for organizations like NYCB, American Ballet Theatre, the Washington Ballet, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met commission was another piece with Christian roots: titled Songs from the Spirit, it incorporated traditional Black spirituals and new songs written by incarcerated musicians.

The philia movement depicts friendship. Houston Ballet soloists Eric Best and Naazir Muhammad. Photo by Amitava Sarkar / Courtesy of Houston Ballet

In Houston, as studio time wrapped up before a full dress rehearsal that evening, Farley called his dancers in close, pulling up a slideshow. He showed an image of the Pillars of Creation from the Webb telescope, one of his inspirations for the agape section, and paraphrased the Bible: “All the morning stars sing together.”

He clicked over to Rodin’s sculpture Burghers of Calais, which depicts men who are willing to die to save their village. He showed images from Henri Matisse, Hieronymus Bosch, and photographer George Platt Lynes and an altarpiece, The Trinity Adored by All Saints, which he said was crucial for the piece’s depiction of the Trinity.

“Whether you connect with the image or not … I want you to know where I was coming from and put yourselves into it,” he said. “We’re all going to dance to our very best—but it’s beyond that.”

The dancers gave him extended applause when he finished sharing.

Farley sees ballet as a way for people to glimpse the resurrected and redeemed body. It’s ordinary humans who are doing things—throwing someone in the air, standing en pointe—which most people can’t do.

“It’s like the Olympics,” he said. With a reference to another Lewis work, The Great Divorce, Farley said, “We see a body that has been trained to be more real.”

“It’s not unnatural; it’s supernatural,” he said. “The body has been cultivated to the full manifestation of its capacity.”

People should go see ballets for more ordinary reasons, Werner piped in: Enjoy ballet like a good meal. Don’t feel like you must “understand” it. Both composer and choreographer want their work to be approachable to anyone, not didactic. Farley may have shown a slideshow for the dancers in order to make his choreography more accessible—but he wouldn’t do that for an audience.

“It’s a ballet, not a lecture,” he said. “Not a sermon.”

Werner said the creators want Four Loves to make sense artistically without someone having read C. S. Lewis.

“People show up late, people come from work, they sit down, they haven’t opened the program,” Werner said. “I would like if somebody tunes in the middle of it on the radio, that they can hear it and just be moved even if they don’t know anything about this.”

Four Loves runs until September 29 at the Houston Ballet.

- More from Emily Belz

Church Life

The ‘Antioch of Asia’?

Isabel Ong

Christian leaders in Singapore wrestle with a prophetic charge and diminishing cross-cultural evangelism.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

In 1983, Ed Pousson picked up Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World prayer guide and read an entry on Singapore. In it, the Southeast Asian country was described as the ‘Antioch of Asia.’

The American missionary and his Malaysian wife, Lai Kheng, had previously lived and served in Malaysia and were planning to make their home there after leaving the mission field.

Reading about Singapore changed the course of their lives.

“It was a defining moment for both of us,” Pousson said. “We prayed and decided on the spot that when we returned to Asia, Singapore would be our home.”

Singapore is the world’s most religiously diverse nation, says the Lausanne Movement’s State of the Great Commission report. Christians make up 17 percent of the population, while 26 percent are Buddhist, 18 percent are Muslim, 8 percent are Hindu, and 6 percent follow a Chinese traditional religion like Daoism (Taoism) or Confucianism, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Christians in Asia are most likely to be familiar with witnessing to their faith in contexts of religious difference,” the Lausanne report also noted.

The nation’s multicultural makeup and its location along major shipping routes are often cited as some of its strengths. It’s easy to draw parallels between Singapore and the biblical Antioch, capital of the Roman province of Syria—a cosmopolitan, multiracial, and multireligious society that served as a major trading hub and commercial center that connected various cultures, said Pousson.

The blend of cultural influences from both the East and West has helped Singaporeans to be globally connected and culturally sensitive, said Manik Corea, national director of the Singapore Center for Global Missions.

These cultural and geographical qualities have also primed Singapore to become a popular missions base for the region. Mission agencies like OMF, OM, and Wycliffe are based there, and believers from surrounding countries go there to study at seminary or attend conferences.

As the Christian population in the country grew in the 20th century, the number of missionaries sent out also increased. Since 2010, however, missionary-sending activity has plateaued, according to the World Christian Database.

Singapore’s mission force is slowing down as fewer people take up full-time missions and as missionaries grow older, data from a 2019 National Missions Study of 158 churches shows.

The prophetic call for the country to be an Antioch of Asia has helped and also hindered mission efforts, said the Singaporean Christian leaders CT interviewed. Many also emphasized an urgent need to boost young believers’ missional mindsets.

Mythic roots

Regarding Singapore as “the Antioch of Asia” or one of its other iterations—an Antioch of Asia or an Antioch for Asia—has permeated Christian consciousness in the country for decades.

The prophetic saying is often attributed to Billy Graham, who visited the country for an evangelistic crusade in 1978. Others claim that this was prophesied by David Yonggi Cho, the founder of the world’s largest megachurch in South Korea.

But no concrete evidence of the phrase’s origins exists.

“As far as I am concern[ed], I did not hear from Dr. Billy Graham in 1978, between [the] last week of November and mid-December, while he was in Singapore, that Singapore will be ‘the Antioch of Asia,’” said Alfred Yeo, then general secretary of the Singapore Billy Graham Crusade. There were no papers or reports from the event that shared this either, Yeo added.

Other leaders of the 1978 evangelistic gathering, like then vice chairman of the organizing committee, James Wong, said otherwise, noting that Billy Graham “prophesied that Singapore would be like Antioch in the New Testament, sending missionaries to all of Asia.”

A Singaporean friend of the Poussons who attended the evangelistic meeting at the National Stadium in 1978 “would swear on a Bible” that he heard Billy Graham utter that prophecy, said Pousson. “That’s the only thing he remembers hearing Billy Graham say.”

The phrase has been referred to at Christian conferences, written about by renowned local pastor Edmund Chan, and featured in magazine articles (including one published at CT in 2020).

This idea has become embedded in the psyche of the Singapore church, whether valid or not, said Mark Syn, author of the book On Being the Antioch of Asia: Global Missions and Missions Partnership Through Asian Lenses.

“Many Singapore Christians and mission leaders I know believe passionately that Singapore carries a divine mandate as God’s ‘Antioch of Asia,’” said Corea, the missions center director.

“They believe God has called the Church in Singapore to be like the original in the book of Acts: the launchpad of Paul’s many missionary journeys and his original sending base.”

Corea himself is “not bothered” about who gave Singapore this prophecy but says it matters whether this title has divine sanction and, if so, how Singapore ought to live it out in a way that’s faithful, appropriate, and realistic.

While Antioch served as a base for Paul’s three missionary journeys, the city was slowly eclipsed by other major cities like Nisibis, Edessa, and Alexandria, which became important missionary-sending places, explained Andrew Peh, lecturer in mission and world religions at Singapore’s Trinity Theological College.

“This accolade is a little bit self-aggrandizing,” he said.

A modern marvel

Apart from being seen as an Antioch of Asia, Singapore has received other accolades over time, ostensibly giving the country an edge when it comes to spreading the Good News and equipping people to do so.

As “Asia’s wealthiest nation,” Singapore has the second highest per-capita GDP in the world. Christian churches reflect this wealth as well. A survey of more than 2,500 attendees of 24 churches conducted between 2009 and 2011 affirmed another article’s claim that “mainstream church-goers typically come from privileged backgrounds, while mega-church-goers tend to belong to the emerging/new middle class.”

“Singapore churches are affluent,” Syn agreed. “That certainly has helped with funding missions.”

The nation’s multicultural society has often been seen as another advantage for mission work. Chinese people make up three quarters of the country’s population of about 5.92 million, while Malays are the next largest and Indians the third.

Growing up in Singapore with an awareness of the need to respect and live harmoniously with people of different cultures and religions was helpful in his cross-cultural mission endeavors, says Corea.

While serving at a church plant in England’s East Anglia, Corea pioneered an international student ministry at a university. “Personally, I found it easy to befriend international people and to get along with people, despite their different mannerisms, customs, religions and perspectives,” he said.

He was also able to adapt well to a different culture when he served with his wife in Thailand for 13 years.

Yet Corea doesn’t think Singapore’s multiculturalism is always beneficial, because there is a propensity to create ethnic enclaves, especially as the majority of people—and Christians—are ethnically Chinese.

“It is possible—and I have witnessed it—for people to live within almost wholly Chinese communities, go to Chinese schools or churches, and not have friends outside their own ethnic grouping,” he said.

In Corea’s view, Singaporean Chinese Christians do well as missionaries in nontraditional roles like community development, business as missions, or tentmaking. “Singaporean Chinese are typically pragmatic, goal- and crisis-oriented, good at business in general, and [good] at organizing things in a focused way,” he said.

And while the country is as multicultural as it is global, its current approach to missions is “fairly parochial,” as many Singaporean believers tend to focus on serving within Asia, says Syn.

“They say, ‘Oh, we can fly anywhere in Asia within seven or eight hours,’” Syn shared. “I would love it to grow up in that respect. … I would love to see Singaporean missionaries going to Europe and Africa in larger numbers than they are.”

Singapore has the most powerful passport in the world, granting its citizens visa-free access to 195 countries.

“Our passport gives us access to so many parts of the world, more than most countries,” said Ng Zhiwen, a pastor who leads transdenominational missions movement Antioch 21. “If we are not participating in God’s mission, then we will not be found to be a faithful steward of all that God has blessed us with.

“We believe that we have been blessed to be a blessing to the nations, in the spirit of Antioch.”

A galvanizing force

Like Ng, many of the leaders CT interviewed say that conceiving of Singapore as an Antioch of Asia has served as a good rallying call for the church, despite its puzzling origins and potential for developing hubris.

The gospel arrived in Singapore in the 1800s through British missionaries from the London Missionary Society. In the early 20th century, fiery Chinese evangelist John Song’s preaching in the country stirred up a nationwide revival, and by 1938, Christians comprised 11.1 percent of the population.

The 1970s saw the birth of the charismatic movement in Singapore alongside the growth of evangelical presence in the country.

“The Graham Crusade was really the peak [of evangelical fervor],” said then honorary chairman of the event, Benjamin Chew. “I definitely see a greater evangelical influence in Singapore in the ’80s.”

Still, the first local missionaries from Singapore were sent more than a decade before Billy Graham landed on its tropical shores.

In 1965, the year the country became an independent republic, Singaporean believers Kate Cheah and Tan Kai Kiat each left for Hong Kong on separate missions. Cheah served refugees in the notorious walled city of Kowloon, while Tan ran a medical mission there for a year, said Ng.

More recently, other Christian leaders have advanced Singapore’s prophetic calling.

The Antioch 21 movement, which Ng now leads, was founded by Rick Seaward in 2003 to encourage the country to live out its calling as Antioch of Asia.

“I believe that Singapore is supposed to be an Antioch of Antiochs,” Seaward wrote in an article for local Christian publication Salt&Light in 2018. “We are called to challenge other cities and nations to be Antiochs.”

The movement was relaunched in 2021 and led by Joseph Chean, former YWAM Singapore national director. He gathered pastors and leaders in the marketplace, education, health care, and mission agencies to pray and seek the Holy Spirit’s leadership in guiding the Singapore church, and he also established a sub-movement, Joshua 21, to mobilize believers aged 40 and below to go to the unreached, said his wife, Kim Chean.

Seaward and Chean died in separate car accidents: the former in Três Pontas, Brazil, in 2018 and the latter in Istanbul last year. But their vision for Singapore as an active missionary-sending base persists through the Antioch 21 movement, which declared 2023 to 2033 “the decade of missions.” The hope is to raise up a new generation of workers to go to the least reached places of Asia and beyond, said Ng.

“In the 1990s, the church of Singapore was one of the top mission-sending churches in the world,” Ng said. “Back then, there were 300-plus churches. Today, the number of churches has easily doubled.”

Ng’s main goal is to foster relationships among different churches and parachurch organizations to fulfill the Great Commission.

There are a lot more independent megachurches now, and not all of them are regularly engaged in missions, he said. The upcoming Antioch Summit in October, which aims to embolden believers to become “an Antioch to the nations,” has 600 sign-ups so far, said Ng.

Other ongoing nationwide movements like LoveSingapore have also placed a strong emphasis on Singapore’s role as an Antioch church. In a video prayer devotional released last year, Jeremy Seaward, pastor of Victory Family Center and Rick Seaward’s son, highlighted the importance of having an Antioch spirit. He referred to Acts 13:2–3, where Barnabas and Saul were set apart for God’s work.

The Antioch church’s example here is instructive for Singapore, says Corea.

“The struggle is for Singapore churches to realize our gift may be to give away the best of what we have for the sake of new, greater centers and movements of God happening in places other than home.”

Missing the mark?

Several key trends, however, have placed Singapore’s prophetic role as Antioch of Asia on shaky ground.

One such trend is the aging missionary population, which is also noticeable in other countries like South Korea. Fewer than 1 in 5 career missionaries in Singapore are under 40 years old, and more than 1 in 3 are 60 and above, according to the 2019 National Missions Study.

Another trend is a decline in long-term sending and a rise in short-term missions. “The notion of being a ‘career missionary’ is virtually nonexistent now,” said Syn, the author.

Singapore’s requirement for its men to enlist in mandatory military service when they turn 18 may well affect the duration of time spent in the mission field.

Missionaries often choose to return to the country to fulfill these obligations. Those who serve abroad are often required to place a bond of at least $75,000 SGD (around $58,000 USD) with the government when their son turns 13 years old if they intend to stay overseas for two years or more, says Corea, whose family returned to Singapore from Thailand when his son was that age.

Other leaders are less convinced of the detrimental impact that mandatory conscription might cause. “It’s hard to say, because the majority of our mission workers are female,” Ng said.

Young Singaporean Christians, meanwhile, may be less inclined to embark on longer-term missionary work because “they lack strong convictions about the lostness of people without Christ” or don’t want their children to miss out on Singapore’s excellent education system, said Lai Kheng Pousson.

Some families are bucking the trend. Chean’s daughters, 19-year-old Ashley and 21-year-old Olivia, are open to becoming long-term missionaries.

Ashley visited 14 countries, including Macedonia, Kosovo, and Lebanon, this year while attending YWAM’s discipleship training school, and Olivia will enter the same program when she completes her studies.

“Missions is certainly in the hearts of the girls and myself,” said Chean. “They see the benefit of setting aside time to focus on growing as a disciple.”

Yet one danger with the popularity of short-term mission trips is that missionaries may be “cultural novices [who] repeat the ethnocentric, imperialistic mistakes of the past,” Syn said.

Singapore’s enjoyment of religious freedom has led many missionaries to share the gospel in other cultures without recognizing or understanding the religious dynamics and composition of the people there, added Peh, the lecturer.

Many short-term mission trips also do not go to unreached people groups (UPGs) but tend to focus on visiting existing ministries or adopting projects in other countries, said Syn.

Findings from the 2019 study reflect this trend as well. “More than 60% of churches are not engaged in UPG work, and there has been limited take up of such work over the last 6 years,” researchers from the National Missions Study wrote.

To some leaders, the history of how the Singapore church was founded is precisely why the need to boost mission efforts across the country is critical.

“We were once an unreached nation, and it’s our privilege to pay it forward by also continuing the work to go to the unreached,” said Ng, the Antioch 21 movement leader.

The Poussons, who are in their 70s, continue to pray, preach, teach, and write in Singapore. They hope to inspire young believers to “take up the Antioch challenge [and] be like Paul: strong in spirit, strategic in thinking, sacrificial in lifestyle, and servant in posture.”

“We love Singapore,” they affirmed. “This miracle of God is blessed to be a blessing. To whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48).

“This little red dot [a moniker for Singapore’s depiction on a world map] has a big responsibility to go bless the nations through Good News and good works.”

- More from Isabel Ong

News

Brazilian Evangelicals Are Split on Lausanne’s Legacy

Franco Iacomini

Latin American Christians developed integral mission theology. Do they still want to own it?

Ingo Roesler / Getty

For years, integral mission—a theological vision that saw evangelism and social justice as inseparable components of Christian life, or as “two wings of an airplane,” as Ecuadorian theologian René Padilla once wrote—has been a legacy of the Lausanne Movement in Brazil. The concept was developed in the 1970s by members of the Latin American Theological Fellowship and motivated Brazilian evangelicals to fight street violence in Rio, battle alcohol abuse in indigenous reserves, and deliver homeless people from drug addiction, among many other achievements.

Recently, however, the legacy of integral mission theology (IMT) has come under scrutiny in Brazil, for generational, demographic, and theological reasons.

In June, the Lausanne movement held a conference in São Paulo to present its Great Commission report, an exhaustive survey of trends affecting global missions efforts. Leading up to the event, evangelicals debated on social media whether the event would become a kind of “funeral for IMT.”

Most of the speakers were young and had joined the movement only in recent years. And no one mentioned “integral mission” from the main stage.

This reality did not escape the observations of longtime Lausanne leaders, who were focused on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the inaugural conference, which will be held next week in Incheon, South Korea.

“Some of us are going to Lausanne 4 with this question in mind: what will become of integral mission?” said Valdir Steuernagel, one of the most prominent Brazilian names in evangelicalism and a senior executive advisor of the Lausanne Movement.

Though the controversy over this concept may have reached fever pitch in Brazil, it goes back decades.

When integral mission was initially conceived in the 1970s, emerging from the first Lausanne congress in 1974, some evangelicals expressed concern about the implications of a gospel that addressed people’s material as well as their spiritual needs. Lausanne-friendly evangelicals were often accused of being influenced by Marxist thought or merely adopting a Protestant version of l iberation theology.

These criticisms have persisted over time. In a 2015 video, Reverend Augustus Nicodemus, a former high-ranking leader in the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, described integral mission as “a corrupted or, at the very least, incomplete reading of reality.” Eventually, division over integral mission arose within the national Lausanne network as well.

Increasing tribalism within domestic Brazilian politics has intensified the conflicts.

In April 2018, pastor Ariovaldo Ramos attended a political rally at which he prayed for Brazil’s embattled president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Shortly after that, the left-wing leader was sent to jail on corruption charges.

That same day, Yago Martins, an influential YouTuber and podcaster in the field of theology, lamented Ramos’s presence at the event on Facebook, using the situation to criticize integral mission. In his words, it was “nothing more than Marxist missiology and theological leftism.”

Eighteen months later, Lula was freed, and he regained the presidency in the 2022 elections. The impact of Ramos’s presence at that 2018 event, however, continues to reverberate in the Brazilian church and in the Lausanne Movement.

Ramos—a former president of World Vision in Brazil and founder of the Frente de Evangélicos pelo Estado de Direito (Evangelical Front for the Rule of Law), which describes itself as a Christian movement promoting social justice and human rights—had long been one of the main Brazilian faces of integral mission in Brazil. In the eyes of the opponents of integral mission, Ramos’s support for Lula was seen as evidence that it was a left-wing political movement, an assertion that Ramos rejects.

“The theology of integral mission has no partisan commitment under any circumstances,” he said. “When I went to that rally, I did so out of my convictions as a citizen. And when I visited Lula in prison, I did it because I was invited to a pastoral visit. No pastor can deny a visit to someone who is in prison.”

In the following years, political polarization worsened among evangelicals, exacerbated by the contentious 2018 and 2022 presidential elections. Critics on the right observed champions of integral mission conspicuously defending a president (Lula) who had allegedly broken the law. Those on the left asked why evangelicals were supporting a candidate (Jair Bolsonaro, elected in 2018) whom they viewed as making misogynistic and prejudiced remarks.

“It has been a very hard season. It has left wounds that are still open,” said the leader of one Christian social services organization, who asked not to be identified so as not to impede his group’s ability to collaborate with other ministries. “People who are admired and respected, including theologians and missiologists, started avoiding each other and even exchanged insults due to different political views.”

This polarization has had notable consequences.

“Today, few preachers use the term ‘integral mission.’ They may even address the topic, but they do not use these words so as not to be canceled, labeled, or excluded,” said Ramos.

Though Lausanne Brazil’s integral mission task force still exists and the national Lausanne network has not suffered any high-profile resignations, Ziel Machado, who attended Lausanne’s second global gathering in Manila in 1989 and currently serves as vice-chancellor of the Servo de Cristo Seminary in São Paulo, acknowledges that Brazil’s divisive political situation has undermined a community once characterized by cooperation and fellowship.

“The term ‘integral mission’ is tarnished and is now part of the conflict,” he said. “Lausanne teaches us to think about reconciliation. But we can’t apply this principle if we don’t address our problems. We need to understand which areas are affected and what reconciliation needs to be made.”

About a year ago, Lausanne’s Latin America director, Daniel Bianchi, asked whether it was time to retire the phrase. “At this time it is necessary to recognize that the term ‘integral mission’ has become a kind of buzzword and has been used for many things to the point of almost losing its meaning,” wrote Bianchi, from Argentina, who assumed his role with Lausanne in 2017.

Fernando Costa, coordinator of the Lausanne Brazil executive committee and executive director of the Centro Evangélico de Missões, said that integral mission has weakened after the death of many of its pioneers, such as Padilla and Puerto Rican Orlando Costas. “This has become something of a dirty word. Anything that is not very healthy for the church is labeled as integral mission,” said Costa. “It’s unfair to integral mission, but no one will put their face forward to defend it.”

These tensions around the idea of integral mission and within Lausanne have occurred simultaneously with the explosive growth of evangelicals in the country. According to the 1970 census, Brazil had 4.8 million evangelicals, representing 5.2 percent of the population. Today, there are 3.5 million evangelicals just in São Paulo, the country’s most populous city. Overall, 63 million Brazilians, or 31 percent of the total population, are evangelicals, according to a Datafolha survey.

Most of these are converts—only 7 percent of the evangelicals indicated to Datafolha that they had attended church since birth. In contrast to the evangelicals of the 1970s, these newcomers are joining a movement that enjoys increasing influence in pop culture and politics.

Many of these new converts are Pentecostals (in Brazil and Latin America, Pentecostals and independent Christians are counted among evangelicals), who represent about 65 percent of evangelicals in the country. These groups have been underrepresented in the Lausanne Movement, in part because in the past they didn’t have their own seminaries or colleges, instead relying on less formal frameworks to train their pastors and missionaries or using institutions operated by other groups, such as Baptists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans. This lack of scholars has in turn meant that Pentecostal positions on theology and missiology have been less visible.

Indeed, Brazil’s largest evangelical denomination, the Assemblies of God, was, until a few years ago, averse to theological scholarship and resistant to academic environments. More recently, many Assemblies of God members have sought theological training. “This has brought them closer to groups like Lausanne,” said Marcos Amado, who led the Lausanne Movement in Latin America from 2011 to 2016. But it has also created the challenge of integrating a different type of theological tradition into a cooperative environment.

Many Pentecostals attended Lausanne’s June Great Commission event. “What I saw was a young crowd very eager to serve Jesus. They have plans. They want to be an influence through social media and spread [the gospel] to as many people as possible,” said Amado.

Costa said that many leaders who are heavily involved in missionary work had limited knowledge of Lausanne’s history. “We are working with these individuals who are shaping the Brazilian missionary movement, to bring them closer to the theoretical and theological understanding of mission,” he explained. “They are discovering the identity of Lausanne along the way.” To do this, they rely on the mentorship of a group of experienced missiologists who have partnered with Lausanne for decades—older and more experienced participants like Valdir Steuernagel, who attended Lausanne’s 1989 global event at Manila.

But is there any chance of restoring the image of integral mission, in Lausanne Brazil or elsewhere?

“The injury that the theology of integral mission has suffered will be healed only if there is repentance. It may come,” said Ramos. “I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to convict people of sin, righteousness, and judgment.”

For Steuernagel, this conflict is part of the Lausanne Movement’s maturation process: “There is always tension in these meetings. If you take away the tension, I think you also kill the spirit of Lausanne.”

- More from Franco Iacomini

Church Life

Becoming a Church for People of All Abilities

Sunita Theiss

We need a culture shift to welcome everyone into the full life of the church.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash, Pexels

It was our first Christmas season as a family of four, and we were excited to attend our new church’s lessons-and-carols service. As my husband carried our infant daughter into the service, I noticed my son marveling at the decorations and the music. I could see him taking it all in with reverence and delight.

After a few hymns my son didn’t know, it was clear he wanted to sing something familiar. Unfortunately, his song of choice was not in our hymnal. As he continued to express with increasing urgency and distress a desire to belt out “Jingle Bells,” I gently shushed him, offering a coloring book and suggesting we sing together somewhere else or after the service had ended.

The couple in front of us turned around as he began to cry. The woman made eye contact with me, glaring as she firmly said, “Maybe you should just leave.” Shocked, we collected our children and moved as quickly as my postpartum body would allow.

As we exited, I found myself in tears. The group of women setting up refreshments outside the sanctuary rushed over and reassured me that our family was always welcome. One of them took my son’s hand and offered him a large piece of cake. The next day, our pastor texted me to let me know he’d heard what had happened and was sorry we had experienced that. He reiterated that our family was always welcome.

Unfortunately, this kind gesture isn’t typical for many families like ours.

My son and I are autistic, and multiple members of our family are neurodivergent—a term that refers to brain-based differences such as autism, ADHD, learning difficulties, and more. To put it another way, we often experience the world differently than the people around us. My son and I are both sensitive to our surroundings and notice subtle patterns that others might miss. For him, this also means he may experience intense fear and distress when he perceives a threat, but he also experiences joy and delight more acutely than most of us.

In recent years, I’ve noticed an increase in conversations about inclusion and hospitality within the church. Indeed, the church is called to hospitality (Heb. 13:2) and care for the marginalized in our communities (Luke 14:12–14; Matt. 25:35–40). I’m grateful for these conversations.

At the same time, we often overlook the need for churches to better welcome and include adults and children with disabilities in all areas of church life. One estimate suggests that 80 percent or more of churches have no form of disability ministry, and yet nearly all churchgoers and pastors say someone with disabilities would be welcome at their church. It feels uniquely challenging for my family to join this conversation—to advocate or seek accommodation—because our disabilities are not externally visible.

In 2018, a robust national study indicated that children with certain chronic health conditions are far less likely to attend church than their typically developing peers. Specifically, children navigating “invisible” disabilities such as autism, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and other types of mental health issues and neurodivergence were the least likely to attend church.

Other studies have found that the majority of parents surveyed indicated that their children with disabilities had been excluded at church. Parents have also reported leaving churches or refraining from church activities because a child was not included or a church seemed unwilling to learn more or make accommodations.

Yet throughout Scripture, we see Jesus reaching out to forgotten, ostracized, or otherwise excluded individuals—healing and restoring them to their communities and loved ones. When Christ encountered a blind man in John 9, he made it clear the disability was not a punishment for sin. Instead, our Savior said, this man’s disability was “so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (v. 3).

I’ve previously heard “the works of God” in this passage defined as the miracle of the man’s ability to see. But what if, when we read passages like this, we consider that the miracle and works of God are also the restoration of community and dignity? I often find myself reflecting that perhaps the work of God and his church lies in enabling all of his image bearers to fully participate in the life of the church, regardless of ability.

Lamar Hardwick, an autistic pastor, writes in his book Disability and the Church: A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion about the importance of making a culture shift alongside practical and tangible changes so that everyone can participate in church life. Like me, Hardwick received his autism diagnosis as an adult.

Physical improvements can certainly be made through facility upgrades, such as ramps, elevators, accessible restrooms, and designated areas for people with mobility needs. Churches can also offer sensory accommodations and communication aids, such as sign language interpreters, assistive listening devices, and large-print bulletins. We can create accessible educational programming, provide training for leadership, and support caregivers.

But this isn’t enough, Hardwick emphasizes. True inclusion requires a culture shift—a movement toward a radical sense of belonging and welcome that values the perspectives of individuals with disabilities and advocates on their behalf.

Inclusion begins with recognizing that every person, regardless of ability, is created in the image of God and has gifts to offer the church community. Rather than viewing individuals with disabilities as needing charity, we are called to recognize their full humanity and the ways they contribute to our collective worship. Galatians 3:28 reminds us that in Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (ESV). This unity includes people of all abilities.

A few months after the lessons-and-carols service, my son was “promoted” from the nursery to children’s church. It wasn’t a seamless transition. He made it clear he didn’t want to go yet, and we agreed that perhaps he wasn’t ready.

We found ourselves at a loss for what to do during the service. We would color and read books in our church’s small library or take walks around the church building. He would pick flowers out of the weeds and offer small bouquets to me as we chatted. One Sunday, as we walked toward the outdoor chapel, he bent to pick a dandelion. As he presented the yellow flower to me, he asked, “Why did God make things different colors?”

I stumbled through an answer, sharing that colors serve many purposes in both nature and the built world—from pollination of flowers to communicating which snakes are venomous to knowing when to stop and go at an intersection. I remember looking at his small outstretched hand, holding still more flowers, realizing that perhaps I wasn’t answering in a way that conveyed the Father’s affection for us. I took the flowers into my own hand, tucked one behind my ear, and added, “But sometimes God just wants us to enjoy beautiful things too.”

There is a movement in the design world to create spaces that are universally accessible from the outset, and designers like Susie Wise and Sara Hendren would argue that the tangible manifestation of this culture shift has to do with how we create and curate our physical spaces to cultivate belonging in the built world. For example, when we place a dumpster next to the accessible entrance, what are we conveying about how we value individuals with disabilities?

The church has the opportunity to radically transform our communities toward belonging—to make every aspect of the way we engage universally accessible and uniquely beautiful for every member of the body of Christ so that no person is limited from fully participating in the life of the church.

Inclusion is not just a moral imperative; it is a lifelong spiritual practice. By intentionally creating spaces where individuals with disabilities are welcomed and celebrated, the church can become a true reflection of the kingdom of God, where all are valued and all belong.

Sunita Theiss is a writer, communications consultant, and homeschool parent based in Georgia.

- More from Sunita Theiss

Ideas

Don’t ‘Spiritually Bypass’ Your Church-Hurt Neighbor

Peridot Gilbert-Reed

Like the Good Samaritan, we’re called to offer a healing balm, not pour salt on their wounds.

The Good Samaritan by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

Wikimedia Commons / Edits by CT

“Pray, believe, and receive—or doubt and do without” was a phrase I often heard in my Christian circle. And although it was not intended to be a harmful adage, it became one.

That is, after I worked at a ministry where I was bullied, isolated, and left to fend for myself. When I finally decided to quit, friends and family still expected me to keep going to church. But I was so wounded from what I had experienced that the thought of attending church literally made me sick to my stomach.

I prayed and believed but didn’t receive. And every time, I felt shame and guilt. I couldn’t help but think, “Maybe I didn’t pray hard enough. Maybe I doubted without realizing it.” And whenever church peers repeated this adage, it caused a visceral response in me. I didn’t have language to convey why this statement bothered me so much at the time. But I do now.

As a therapist working with religious trauma, I have encountered many individuals who shared stories about experiences that didn’t quite classify as spiritual abuse but were equally unsettling. I began investigating this phenomenon further through my doctoral studies and soon stumbled upon a term to classify these experiences: spiritual bypass.

Spiritual bypassing is when a person uses Scripture, religious concepts or ideals, and spiritual mantras to “bypass” the effects of a negative experience out of a desire to ease their pain—for example, when we experience a loss and we say to ourselves, “God’s got this. His ways are higher than mine.” While this statement does hold truth, the statement may encourage us to “bypass” a healthy process of dealing with our feelings or thoughts about the loss.

However, as I studied this concept, I recognized spiritual bypassing can also be done toward another person—for example, if someone is expressing the hurt of his or her loss to a friend in the faith and that person responds with, “God’s got this. His ways are higher than yours. You just have to trust him.” This can cause the wounded person to feel dismissed, disregarded, shamed, and even spiritually gaslighted.

This is exactly what I experienced in the church—and I know many others have experienced it too. Understanding spiritual bypassing provided a language for my own experiences and for my clients seeking treatment for religious trauma. Instead of spiritual bypass, we are called to love our neighbors in such a way that honors their hurt as well as draws them to Christ—with the eventual (not immediate) goal of helping them heal emotionally and spiritually.

The Good Samaritan story in Luke 10 (vv. 25-37) is one with which most of us are familiar. A man is attacked, brutally beaten, and left for dead. But the wounding does not stop there. It continues as both the priest and Levite “bypass” the man on the other side of the path. These men, who are well aware of the law “Love your neighbor as yourself,” choose to ignore the man’s need for reasons we can only surmise.

What we do know is that a Samaritan, whom the Jews despised, is the only one who stops to help the man. He sees the man’s wounds and does not add insult to injury by passing him by on the other side. Instead, he draws near enough to see the man’s need and takes the time to bind his wounds with oil and wine—offering healing and relief specific to his wounds. And at his own expense, he brings the man to a place where he will have the time and space to heal.

Whether we are the Good Samaritan or the man in the road, this story reminds us of the high expectations Jesus has for his followers when it comes to caring for wounded neighbors.

In a previous article for CT, author Michelle Van Loon observes that “today’s pews are full of people who bear scars—or still-oozing wounds—from church hurt.” And when we spiritually bypass our church-hurt neighbor, we pour salt on their wounds instead of oil and wine.

As I researched spiritual bypassing, I found that most people have experienced this feeling of disregard and dismissal—as if their pain is invisible, much like the beaten man in the road—within the church or with friends and family members of faith.

I’ll never forget the woman who sat in my office during a session and said to me through clenched teeth, “My family keeps telling me I am being overdramatic and I am inflicting my stress and anxiety on myself. If I hear someone tell me one more time to ‘Be worried about nothing, but in everything by prayer, blah, blah, blah, I might just lose my mind.’” She stated these words made her feel “not seen, not understood, not safe.”

What were no doubt intended as words of life were, in fact, robbing her of life. This wounded woman wanted someone to validate her pain and her experience. She longed to be known.

In his book The Deepest Place, Dr. Curt Thompson describes “suffering with” someone as remaining present and accepting the person’s pain without following it up with spiritual platitudes. We allow them to know that we see them, care for them, are with them, and are willing to accept them just as they are—not as we are or want them to be.

Often, we spiritually bypass people because we feel uncomfortable with their pain or helpless to do anything about it. Out of our own insecurity, our instinct is to offer a Scripture verse, spiritual saying, or reminder of a biblical truth because it’s the only thing we feel capable of offering them in such a time. And although we might feel better about the situation afterward, we may not recognize the impact it has on the other person.

That is not to say there will not be times when someone reaches out to us for advice, wisdom, or words of encouragement. But unless we take the time to fully listen, recognize, and empathize with their pain, we will not know how to best meet their needs, and we may heap on them more harm than hope.

Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution for the wounded man, the Good Samaritan provided precisely what his specific injuries required by binding his wounds with oil and wine. Our actions and words toward our own hurt neighbors need to do the same.

I have learned this story the hard way in my own life. Before I experienced my own church hurt and before becoming a therapist or pursuing my doctorate, I was a small group and women’s minister in the church, who often talked with people about their latest struggles and hurts.

Once, I remember listening to a church member recount her story of church hurt, and my first thought was that those who hurt her did not use the biblical model of approaching someone with an accusation of wrong (Matt. 18:15–20). And before I could stop myself, I found those words spilling out of my mouth. She immediately responded with, “Oh, no! Do not use that on me!” I was a little befuddled because I thought she needed to hear that and it would support her case. Yet I was sorely mistaken because that verse had been used as a weapon against her.

This woman’s wound was oozing, and I was not only spiritually bypassing her hurt but also pouring salt in her wounds rather than oil and wine. And although I didn’t know it then, I recognize now that I was giving her what I thought she wanted or needed to hear rather than taking the time to listen for what she truly needed.

The Bible reminds us that it is wise to be quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:19). Doing so enables us to hear the broken hearts of God’s children, but it also allows us to incline our ears to God and listen for the words he alone knows his wounded children need to hear. Scripture tells us that “If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides.” (1 Pet. 4:11)

The Samaritan did not question the beaten man, offer him advice on how to overcome his pain, or tell him to forgive his abusers. He simply soothed the man’s wounds and carried him to a place where he would have the space and time to heal.

Very seldom do any wounds heal overnight—whether physical or spiritual. They all need a certain amount of time and space to heal. The Good Samaritan understood this. He did not put a time limit on the man’s healing, even when it was at his own expense. He instead wrote a blank check for the innkeeper to do whatever it took to care for the man, for as long as it took.

This is the radical love we are called to show the wounded souls in our families, churches, and communities, or the people God has placed along the path of our daily lives. We cannot put a time limit on each other’s healing—even when it is uncomfortable for us. Trying to force someone to hurry up and heal can deepen their wounds or at least halt their healing.

My own experience with church hurt was especially hard for those closest to me to fathom because they were also in ministry. They offered all the standard phrases of spiritual bypassing: forgive seventy times seven, do not let the sun go down on your anger, turn the other cheek. And while they may have meant well, their words reopened my wounds again and again. They were asking me to go back into the very environment that had repeatedly hurt me.

I finally implemented boundaries so that I could heal. After not attending church for a year, I slowly reintegrated back into the fold where I had once served. Even then, I still experienced PTSD-like symptoms when I approached the church: rapid heart rate, knots in my stomach, and dissociation. I gave myself permission that even if I felt unsafe while sitting in the parking lot of the church, I could leave. And many times, I did. But it was through giving myself time and space that I eventually healed.

The church is filled with wounded people just like myself and many of my clients. After all, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick (Mark 2:17). Week after week, people enter the house of the Lord with unseen wounds, whether fresh or festering. And for many, space and time may be all the oil and wine they need. But through our simple acts of compassion, our church-hurt neighbors can experience the healing love of Christ as he intends his love to be known.

Peridot (Peri) Gilbert-Reed is a licensed professional counselor and supervisor. She is also a certified trauma specialist focusing on religious trauma.

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SBC to Sell Nashville Headquarters to Cover Cost of Abuse Cases

Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

Southern Baptists have spent down reserves with over $12 million in legal fees over the past three years.

Southern Baptist Convention Headquarters in downtown Nashville.

Holly Meyer / AP Photo

An investigation into how leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have dealt with sexual abuse by clergy has cost more than $12 million over the past three years, causing the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to put its Nashville headquarters up for sale, the SBC’s Executive Committee announced on Tuesday.

The expenditures, which include $3 million spent fending off a lawsuit filed by a former SBC president, have led the committee to spend down its reserves in what its auditors have called an unsustainable manner. The group, which met in Nashville this week, also approved a loan to cover budget shortfalls.

Lawyers for the SBC will meet Thursday with attorneys for the former SBC president, Johnny Hunt, in a court-order mediation session, where the two sides will discuss settling their dispute. Hunt has claimed the SBC leadership ruined his reputation by reporting on his past sexual misconduct and for including him in a report on allegedly abusive leaders.

The Executive Committee’s fiscal woes come as the denomination is struggling to implement reforms ordered by the SBC’s governing body two years ago, designed to help churches better prevent and respond to abuse.

On Tuesday, members of the Executive Committee also voted to set up a new department to deal with the issue of abuse reforms, which will take over the reform effort from volunteers.

“Southern Baptists, we have had two task forces that have done difficult and important work, but it’s time now to stop talking about what we’re going to do and take an initial strategic step of action that puts into place an administrative response to this issue,” Jeff Iorg, president of the Nashville-based Executive Committee, told trustees. Iorg described the new department as a “beginning point of a workable solution” on the issue of abuse reform.

However, the fate of the “Ministry Check” website, a long-sought element of the sexual abuse reforms that was approved by the Southern Baptist annual meeting more than two years ago, remains uncertain.

A website, approved in June 2022, was supposed to include the names of Southern Baptist pastors and leaders convicted of abuse, those who confessed to abuse or have a court judgment for abuse against them, as well as those who have credible allegations of abuse made against them.

To date, no names have been added to the site, and SBC leaders have no current plans to update it and have taken no responsibility for it.

Instead, the Ministry Check site remains in the hands of a volunteer-led nonprofit called the Abuse Response Commission, which has no official ties to the SBC.

Josh Wester, a North Carolina pastor who helped start the commission, said names can’t be added to the site without a go-ahead from the SBC’s Executive Committee.

“When and if the EC notifies us they have cleared the hurdles on their end, we will make it live,” Wester told RNS in a text. Wester is the former chair of a task force, dissolved earlier this year after making limited progress, that had been charged with implementing abuse reform.

At the Executive Committee’s meeting on Tuesday, Iorg said that the committee had no ties to the Abuse Response Commission or any control over its work. Instead, he said, the committee would focus on hiring staff for the new department before taking up issues such as the Ministry Check site.

“Our first step will be to hire a full-time executive director,” Iorg said in an email. “Once that new leadership is in place, we will begin to take next steps, including enhancing resources available through that website.”

The Executive Committee’s new abuse reform department will be funded initially with $1.8 million provided by Send Relief, a humanitarian project led by the SBC’s two mission boards. A spokesman for the North American Mission Board said the funds will be given directly to the Executive Committee. In the past, the heads of the mission boards barred funds from going directly to the Abuse Response Commission.

Executive Committee trustees also discussed the ongoing costs of the SBC’s abuse crisis, including the Hunt lawsuit.

Court documents filed in the lawsuit show the lawyers for Hunt first reached out to the SBC’s attorneys in February to discuss a possible resolution. After a court order in early September, the two sides scheduled a mediation hearing for September 19 and will update the court by September 26.

The Executive Committee’s building, at 901 Commerce St. in downtown Nashville, was originally built for $8 million in the 1980s, on land donated by Lifeway, the SBC’s publishing arm, according to Baptist Press, an official SBC publication. The property also houses the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and a library and historical archive. The building was appraised for $31.7 million in 2021, according to The Tennessean newspaper.

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Seminary Professor Accused of Secret Second Marriage

Daniel Silliman

Accountability group says Vince Bantu, an expert in ancient African Christianity, is justifying adultery with an argument for polygamy. Bantu denies their claims.

Vince Bantu lectures on early Christian theology in Egypt.

Youtube screengrab

The St. Louis ministers weren’t prepared to debate polygamy.

Darren Young and Thurman Williams, who work in urban ministry in St. Louis, say they joined an accountability group with fellow local pastor and Fuller Theological Seminary professor Vince Bantu for moral support and mutual discipleship.

They felt honored to be in the group with him. Bantu is a rising star in American evangelicalism—an energetic Black scholar doing important research on the origins of Christianity and making it relevant to the church today.

His work has been praised as “nothing short of paradigm shifting,” and he has been called “a legit legend and “a force of nature” who “drops all kinds of fire.” His book A Multitude of All Peoples won a CT award of merit in 2021.

Bantu is in great demand on the evangelical lecture circuit. Just this year he has spoken at Calvin University, Dallas Theological Seminary, the Jude 3 Project’s annual gathering in Washington, DC, several smaller Christian colleges, and some large evangelical churches. Not to mention podcasts, webinars, and the history and theology classes he teaches at Fuller, both online and at the seminary’s Houston campus.

But for the past five years, when Bantu was home in St. Louis, he would meet with his accountability group. The three Black men would talk about life and ministry and sin. They would try to set up guardrails to help each other avoid temptation.

Until Bantu started to argue that one way for him to avoid sexual temptation was to marry multiple women, the accountability partners told Christianity Today.

They were sitting in the Drip Community Coffee House in south St. Louis in December 2023, both men recalled in separate interviews, when Bantu announced that he thought polygamy was biblical and he was talking to his wife about marrying more women. According to the ministers, he told them he had two in mind.

“I was just dumbfounded,” said Williams, who pastors a Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation and directs the homiletics program at Covenant Theological Seminary.

The three men met again in January at Ari’s Ice Cream Parlor and Cafe on the north side of the city. Text messages shared with CT show Bantu sent the two men an article defending polygamy as a Christian sexual ethic and arguing that Western culture condemns marrying multiple women—but the Bible doesn’t.

“I should have just said, ‘Man this is crazy,’” Williams said. “But I tried to argue with him about it.”

As they started to talk over breakfast at Ari’s, the two men recall, Bantu announced that he already had a second wife. He said he was secretly practicing polygamy with a woman who attended his church and was also one of his students.

“I never saw it coming,” said Young, a Young Life area director. “I just never would have thought that. He said he married himself and her ‘unto the Lord.’ That was the phrase he used, ‘unto the Lord.’”

Bantu denies this. He sent CT a statement saying the men in his accountability group are lying.

“My brothers in Christ have fallen into the snare of jealousy and have made false allegations about me,” Bantu wrote. “I cannot fully comprehend the motivation for these accusations.”

According to Bantu, it is true the practice of marrying multiple women “came up in conversation,” but he wasn’t advocating polygamy. He told CT in an email, “I believe biblical marriage is marital union between one man and one woman who enter into a marriage covenant with Christ.”

The woman that Bantu purportedly married “unto the Lord” also denies it.

“I would never do something like that,” she said in an email to CT. “I am friends with the Bantus.”

But a bishop responsible for oversight of Bantu’s nondenominational Beloved Community Church said the allegations are “consistent and credible.”

The bishop, Paulea Mooney-McCoy, a Black woman based in Boston, questioned Bantu about the allegations in April, according to an email she wrote to Williams and Young. But she could not get clear or complete answers from him.

“His response fails to make logical sense to me,” she told the accountability group.

Mooney-McCoy was not convinced she was getting the truth. She subsequently resigned her oversight position earlier this year.

The two accountability partners enlisted another local Black pastor, Michael Byrd, to act as a witness in their dispute with Bantu, in accordance with the men’s reading of Matthew 18:16.

Together, the three ministers told Bantu he needed to confess his polygamy to his church, his ministry partners, and the institutions where he teaches. He rebuffed them, the men said.

“He just said, ‘We’re not talking about this,’” Byrd, who is Southern Baptist, told CT. “And ‘If you tell anybody my business, I’m suing y’all for defamation.’”

When the three ministers became convinced that Bantu would not repent, they wrote to the leadership of Fuller Seminary, where Bantu holds a position in the school of missions and theology. Fuller faculty are required to uphold the seminary’s community standards, which includes a commitment to the belief that marriage is a “covenant union between one man and one woman.”

The school is currently looking into the allegations.

“Fuller Seminary is committed to thoroughly investigating any allegations of inappropriate conduct,” general counsel Lance Griffin said in a statement. “We are aware of these allegations and can confirm an internal investigation is underway.”

Fuller has also hired Public Interest Investigations, a California firm with 11 investigators, to conduct an inquiry. When it is finished, the firm will report its findings to the administration.

The three ministers sent another letter with their concerns about Bantu to the board of Meachum School of Haymanot, a seminary that aims to bring graduate-level theological education to Black communities. Bantu founded the school and is listed on the website as “Ohene,” a Ghanian word meaning chief or king.

The student that Bantu reportedly said he married is enrolled at Meachum. She posted on social media that she would “highly highly highly” recommend a class with Bantu.

The chair of Meachum’s board responded to the letter from the accountability group with a threat of legal action.

“I wish to advise you that if necessary we will seek legal recourse and damages from each of you to the fullest extent of the law,” C. Jeffrey Wright, who is also CEO of Urban Ministries, wrote in an email that was shared with CT. “Defamation is a serious matter.”

Wright noted in the email that he is also on the board at Fuller but indicated he was writing in his capacity at Meachum and Urban Ministries. He declined CT’s request for an interview.

The accountability group has now decided to go public. The three ministers believe it is their responsibility, as accountability partners for a Christian brother they believe is unrepentant, to “tell it to the church” (Matt. 18:17).

They said they are concerned the evangelical institutions will not take sufficient action—or will handle the matter but keep it private, as a personnel issue. They told CT that even if Fuller or Meachum do a full investigation and decide the accusations are true, they believe Bantu will likely be able to move on and find other teaching and speaking opportunities.

He was forced to resign from one church and one seminary in 2018 for an inappropriate relationship with a student. The student came forward, prompting a Title IX investigation, and Bantu confessed and stepped down. Yet there is no gap in his resume. The following year, according to his curriculum vitae, Bantu taught seminary courses at Western, Eden, NAIITS, and Fuller, where he was later made an assistant professor.

He joined the leadership council of the And Campaign. In 2019 and 2020, he accepted invitations to speak at Biola University, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and three Christian conferences, his curriculum vitae shows.

The evangelical speaking circuit and his teaching positions have allowed Bantu to connect with multiple women, convincing some of them to have sex with him, according to the men in his accountability group.

The pastor of his previous congregation, Outpour Evangelical Covenant Church in St. Louis, said there is now a clear pattern: Bantu gets in trouble, the issues are dealt with privately, and he gets to move on without any change to his behavior.

Bum Kim, a Korean American pastor in the Evangelical Covenant denomination, brought Bantu on as his co-pastor at Outpour in 2016. They shared a single salary in an effort to grow a diverse, multiethnic church with a strong commitment to evangelism and social justice.

Kim told CT he knew Bantu through his teaching, speaking, and writing, and had seen him around St. Louis, which is Bantu’s hometown. Kim met with him, discussed the vision of the church, and was impressed by Bantu’s passion for racial reconciliation, social justice, and community development.

That was the extent of the vetting.

“We didn’t reach out to the last place that Vince served, and no one has reached out to us since he left,” Kim said. “Who is going to be next? There’s always going to be a next place.”

Bantu, who is biracial, was born Vince Campbell and changed his name in graduate school while exploring the history of Christianity in Africa. The word Bantu is the name for a family of African languages, including Swahili, Zulu, and Kongo, and the people who speak them.

Bantu studied Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and wrote a dissertation on Egyptian Christians’ ethnic identity in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. He earned his doctorate in 2015 and started speaking widely in evangelical circles on “the ancient future of globalizing Christianity,” arguing that “Christianity is not a white man’s religion.”

That same year, he took a visiting position at Covenant Theological Seminary, the PCA school in Missouri, as a professor of missiology. He taught God’s World Mission, a class which seminarians typically took in their first semester.

Some of his students also attended Jubilee Community Church, where Bantu was an assistant pastor until he suddenly left without much explanation, according to a student who later made allegations of an inappropriate relationship. She went to Jubilee with him and then accepted an invitation to attend Bible studies at his house.

The woman spoke to CT on the condition she not be named in this story. CT allows victims of harassment and abuse to remain anonymous. Her identity and many of the details of her story were confirmed by multiple sources.

“It was easy to gravitate to him and connect to him, especially if you cared about multicultural stuff, poverty issues, and all of that,” the seminary student said. “I started spending time at the Bantus’ house, just hanging out on the regular.”

The seminary student followed Bantu to Outpour Community Church, where he became a co-pastor with Kim. In 2018, she said, Bantu approached her and told her he wanted to be her friend—not just professor-student, but “friend friend.” She happily agreed. But a day or so later, she recalled, Bantu pushed for more commitment.

“For him, friendship is this huge deal. It’s really fraught. He mentioned betrayal explicitly,” she said.

Soon after, according to the woman, she and Bantu started texting constantly and spending lots of time together. One Saturday evening he took her to the St. Louis Steak ’n Shake where he hung out as a kid, and then drove around all night on a tour of his childhood, talking until it was time to go to church. Bantu preached that Sunday morning.

The relationship grew more intense, with escalating demands of intimacy and commitment, the seminarian told CT. Bantu said his “love language” was words of affirmation and urged the young woman to affirm him, she recalled. He would ask her, “What do you love about our relationship?” If she went five hours without texting, he would get offended.

The seminarian was 28 years old at the time. Bantu was 36.

The woman recalled he also started to push her to be more physically affectionate, which he said was normal and healthy for friends. They would hold hands, she told CT, and hug for a long time, and he would kiss her on both cheeks.

“To me, it was platonic but weird,” the woman said. “I know people could look at me and say, ‘How could you not read that as romantic?’ I’m sorry. I didn’t. He was my pastor and professor, and I trusted him.”

The student was surprised, she said, when Bantu professed his love for her.

“He told me he believes you can have romantic relationships outside of marriage, and it’s biblical to be romantic outside the confines of marriage,” she said. “He would never commit adultery, but he was really hoping I would agree to be in an extramarital romantic relationship with him.”

The woman said she told Bantu she didn’t think that sounded biblical. It didn’t seem right to her. She also said she didn’t have feelings for Bantu but saw him more as a mentor, someone she could learn from. She promised not to cut off the relationship, though.

“He was the center of my entire community,” the woman told CT. “And I didn’t want to be the person who abandoned him.”

Around that time, the seminarian found a book at the library called Anatomy of an Affair. She read it and realized, she said, that her relationship with Bantu fit the definition of an “emotional affair.”

When she told that to Bantu, he admitted he had previously committed adultery and had been thinking about having sex with her, the woman said. He confessed to a “love addiction” and asked for the seminarian’s help navigating his emotional issues. She recalled talking with him in his parked car until 4 a.m. that night.

A week later, at the encouragement of a friend, the woman called the assistant dean of students at Covenant and said, “I want to report an inappropriate relationship between me and Dr. Bantu.”

The school investigated, and Bantu agreed to step down in 2018.

“He was a visiting professor, and his employment with the school ended through resignation,” Covenant president Thomas C. Gibbs told CT. “It was, at the time, believed Dr. Bantu was demonstrating full repentance and had given a full confession.”

The seminary also informed Outpour Community Church of its investigation and Bantu’s confession to an inappropriate relationship with a student.

Bantu repeated the confession to his co-pastor, Kim, and gave church elders typed-out transcripts of text messages between him and the seminary student as evidence of what he called an “emotional affair.”

Bantu wrote a letter to the church announcing that he was going to step down. Kim sent it out to the congregation on November 26, a few days after Thanksgiving.

“I initiated and participated in an emotional affair with a sister in Christ,” said the letter, which was given to CT. “I used the absence of sexual behavior in the relationship as justification to engage in intimate conversation which led to the development and communication on my part of romantic feelings.”

Bantu privately expressed his expectation he could return to ministry in six months or a year, according to Kim, who said that he told him, “That will never happen.”

The pastors argued about qualifications for ministry and standards of accountability.

“He wouldn’t accept any authority. He wouldn’t give me authority, and he didn’t want to be under the authority of any denomination that was white,” Kim said. “But Vince wouldn’t join one of the Black denominations and sit under a Black pastor either. He was obviously gifted and charismatic, but he needed to be discipled by an aged, experienced Black pastor.”

The two men parted ways. Bantu was fairly open about what happened, according to people who talked to him at the time. He said he’d messed up and had an emotional affair. But he also blamed Kim and said there were racial dynamics to their conflict.

Bantu set up his own restoration process with a group of local ministers who were his peers. It is not clear what that process involved, but Bantu was restored to ministry by the ad hoc group after about a year. He started his own congregation called Beloved Community Church in late 2019 or early 2020.

Beloved is a small multiethnic and multilingual church, with regular attendance of about 12 people. The congregation rents space to meet and also spends a lot of time socializing, including regular retreats, vision trips, and “kick-its.” Bantu is the main preacher and focuses the bulk of his 45-minute sermons on themes of justice.

Even for a nondenominational church of that size, the authority structure that Bantu set up at Beloved was unusual. There was the bishop in Boston—though it is unclear how she got that title or how she provided oversight. Paulea Mooney-McCoy declined to speak to CT.

Bantu’s church also has two elders. In his statement to CT, Bantu said he is “grateful for the continued support and guidance of the elders” at Beloved Community. One of them, until recently, was Bantu’s mother, who is also taking classes at the seminary he founded.

The accountability group started around the same time as Beloved. Young told CT that in the planning stages and in the early accountability meetings, they talked about the need for intense commitment to the group—almost a covenant. Bantu wanted that, and Young did too.

There were four or five others, but they eventually dropped off, and the group settled in as just the three ministers working in similar urban contexts: Young, Bantu, and Williams.

Williams was a preaching professor at Covenant and had 25 years’ experience as a pastor. He had also just planted his own church in St. Louis’s West End neighborhood and was eager for the kind of relationships with other ministers that could sustain a pastor through difficult days.

“I knew I needed that, both the friendship with people outside my own church and a place to talk about real things with people,” Williams said. “That’s what I was looking for.”

Young respected Bantu as a minister and scholar who had a national profile but also cared deeply about their city. He was impressed with the man’s authenticity, vulnerability, and openness.

He was even more impressed when Bantu confessed a past affair, telling the group, as Young and Williams both recalled, that he had had sex with one of his wife’s close friends. The adultery had ended seven or eight years before, and the various relationships had all been restored.

But in 2021, the men said, Bantu admitted the same woman was living with his family and serving at his church, and said the two of them were starting to cross emotional and physical lines.

“I remember thinking, We’re doing it. We’re living out true community and accountability,” Young told CT. “And also, Brother, you need to get her out of your house! What are you doing?”

Bantu denies this happened. He said the woman currently lives with him and his family, but there was no affair. The woman also told CT that she has lived with the Bantus for about 10 years and while she and Bantu are close friends, “there isn’t anything inappropriate about our relationship.”

In a text sent to the accountability partners and shared with CT, however, Bantu said that living situation was “dangerous” because of past mistakes, but assured the men that at the moment, “nothing is happening with her.”

The three men kept talking in 2021. They kept trying to hold each other accountable, trying to help each other make good decisions and avoid moral failures. Young and Williams told CT that in 2022, though, Bantu confessed to multiple recent incidents of adultery with women he met while traveling.

He texted Young after one of them: “Just screwed up big time brother.”

Young replied, “Uh oh,” in the text exchange, which he shared with CT.

At a late-night meeting at a Buffalo Wild Wings, the two men recall, Bantu confessed he had met one woman in a hotel and had sex with another multiple times in a car at the St. Louis airport.

“It was probably 10 or 11 at night,” Young said, “and I am yelling at Vince in the Buffalo Wild Wings: ‘You can’t be a pastor and sleep around with women! You have to pick one! You can’t do both! You have to pick.’”

In another text from 2022, Bantu said he had repeatedly broken his marriage vows “in terms of faithfulness.” He wanted to save his marriage. He said he had ended one ongoing affair, although he was still “open to talking to her for feeling pursued by her which I don’t think is overtly sinful.” In the text he admitted this was “dangerous.”

Bantu told CT that while he did tell the men in his accountability group about “sinful actions” in the past, none of them occurred after 2019.

“I deny all of the allegations that allegedly took place during my time at Fuller,” he wrote in an email. “During my time at Fuller I have been in compliance with our Statement of Faith and Community Standards.”

Williams and Young say this is not true. They say their group was not talking about past sins but ongoing moral struggles and the crises brought on by temptation.

“Still talking with the woman but haven’t slipped up again,” Bantu wrote in one text in 2022. And then a few days later he added, “I’m tripping for real,” saying he and the woman “talk and text all day everyday,” and “I feel bad like I probably shouldn’t.”

In 2023, the two men told CT, Bantu confessed to another affair with a woman he had met on social media. She had sent him a direct message because she appreciated his scholarship, and Bantu encouraged her to move to St. Louis to study at Meachum.

The woman did move, enrolling at the school and attending his church, the two men said.

Bantu confessed that he and the Meachum student then started to have sex, according to Williams and Young.

“I lost it,” Young said. “I started yelling, ‘How foolish can you be! Vince, we need you. You cannot be another fallen pastor. You can’t.’”

Bantu denies having an inappropriate relationship with this student. He described the woman twice in his email as “a family friend.”

The woman told CT the same thing in an email.

“I am disgusted,” she said. “When I heard that these men were accusing me of participating in polygamy I was irate because that is a lie and I would never do something like that.”

The woman said she does not live with the Bantus and never has.

Bantu is currently building a new home in St. Louis’s West End neighborhood. It is round, designed to look like an African hut, and will be decorated with African symbols. The building is two stories and will have three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a small movie theater.

“It’s the only round house in the neighborhood,” said Andrew Medlen, a minister who lives across the alley from the construction. “It’s one of those houses—people drive by, they slow down to look at it. People in the neighborhood talk about it. And that’s Vince. He loves that.”

Medlen and his family briefly attended Bantu’s church before deciding they weren’t comfortable there. He knows the men in the accountability group and is convinced they are telling the truth about Bantu.

“I didn’t see it,” he told CT, “but there were some weird things that make sense now.”

The accountability group said that at a follow-up meeting in December 2023, Bantu told them he was considering polygamy. He told them it was biblical and they just needed to “to study the Scriptures from a non-Westernized position,” they said.

He followed up that night, sharing an article that he said looked at the different views among Christians in Africa but made the case for “the validity of polygamy.”

In January 2024, the men met to argue about it, and they say Bantu told them at that meeting he was actually already practicing polygamy and had married the Meachum student “unto the Lord.”

Bantu said his wife and her friend had accepted his arguments for polygamy, the two men recall, though Bantu’s two children were struggling with the idea of having multiple moms. The ministers said they tried to argue with him but didn’t have any success.

“He’s really good at arguing,” Williams said. “I feel like I failed him. Like I let him get comfortable in that hot water, and before he knew it, the water was boiling. And even more, I feel like I failed all the people that his behavior impacts.”

According to Williams and Young, Bantu claimed monogamy is a Western cultural practice, not a biblical one. He said polygamy has long been acceptable in African Christianity.

Multiple African Christian scholars told CT this is not true.

“It is not characteristic of African Christianity,” said Nimi Wariboko, a Nigerian professor who teaches theology at Boston University. “It is part of the rhetoric against Indigenous churches. When Indigenous Christians felt white missionaries weren’t treating them fairly and they wanted to assert their human dignity, they broke away, and the missionary churches said they were doing it because they wanted to practice polygamy.”

There is a debate, according to Wariboko, about whether polygamous converts to Christian faith should be required to divorce their additional wives. But there has never been general acceptance of polygamy in African-led churches.

And even among non-Christian polygamists, Wariboko said, there is no such thing in Africa as a secret second marriage. Marriages are public; affairs are secret.

Ebenezer Blasu, a theology professor at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture in Ghana, added that Christians should look to the Bible, not to Africa, to learn what is biblical.

“Africa does not determine biblical value and moral systems,” he told CT. “A close look [at the New Testament] suggests Jesus endorses monogamy as the original establishment of God.”

Bantu has not spoken publicly on polygamy, nor has he spoken or written about Christian sexual ethics and the biblical view of marriage. He told CT he affirms Fuller’s statement on the issue, though.

In spring 2024, the accountability group decided not to debate polygamy with Bantu. Williams and Young said they didn’t really think their differences with Bantu were theological. Bantu, they said, wasn’t persuaded to embrace polygamy by his academic study and Bible reading. He was coming up with a theological justification for his moral failings.

Michael Byrd, the pastor who joined the accountability group as a Matthew 18 witness, told CT he has spent 20 years in ministry and known many Black and white ministers in St. Louis. He’s never heard anyone argue for polygamy.

“I mean, come on,” Byrd said. “It’s sexual sin. It’s sexual sin. It’s just a different name for it.”

The accountability group met for the last time in April 2024. Young, Williams, and Byrd told Bantu that he needed to confess, repent, and resign from ministry, and end his secret marriage to a seminary student.

Bantu walked out, they said.

For the three St. Louis ministers, that doesn’t end their responsibility. They believe they are still morally bound to call Bantu to repentance, however public that has to be.

“He’s trying to avoid accountability, and he’s using his position and his fame,” Young told CT. “I committed to him that I would hold him accountable … but I never thought I’d be here with my friend Vince.”

- More from Daniel Silliman

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